Flesh Is Weak (Renegades Saga, Book 9)
by Renegades Inc
Summary: After the Emperor's self-declaration of divinity and alliance with Chaos, he has repudiated the Treaty of Olympus, and sent his son Ferrus Manus to subjugate Mars. But the Mechanicum's cyborgs are proving harder than expected to subdue, and as the war drags on, other powers play their own hands. Written by son of azurman and VulkansNodosaurus, 2013-16. Takes place late 002.M31.
1. Prologue: Acolyte

The silence never stayed. Constantly, the hum of the engines and the occasional distant sound of servitors maintaining the working parts of the void-ship echoed through the vessel. A small chamber lay in the very deepest parts of the _Sanguis Ferrum_ , a strike cruiser of the Iron Hands' fleet in orbit around the red planet. At the centre of the room knelt a lone Astarte. The pitch-black of his V plate reflected no light and gave off no sign of life except for the red glow from its eye sockets. Still as a statue the warrior remained, like the unfortunate fate of the mythical medusa's victims.

All around the walls, no lights shone and no decorations hung; only the metal pipes and beams showed across the rooms boundaries, for this was a ship of the Iron Hands, who needed no finery.

"Nephew, what news do you bring?" Another figure appeared in the room at the far wall.

"My lord, Ferrus Manus has taken control of Mars and finished the clean-up operations two days ago." The Astarte still knelt and remained still, but a voice came over his helmet's vocal transmitter.

"This is good; however, i could have learned of this from Ferrus himself. What news do you bring?" repeated the giant figure.

"Father is troubled, his human emotions are kicking in."

"What do you mean? You state weakness in the Gorgon."

"Despair, my lord. First captain Santar agreed not with the Emperor's vision and attempted to defy our father. He had no choice but to silence him before he could cause harm. Even as we speak the Morlocks are searching the legion for signs of insurrection," exxplained the figure.

"I see, and this news is playing havoc on my brother's mind. Very well." The giant primarch turned from the Iron Hand and started walking. "Ulrach, keep me updated, and remember: for the Emperor and the glory of Chaos." The giant disappeared, evaporating into thin air as the hologram deactivated. The computer on the far side of the chamber powered down.

"For the glory of Chaos," muttered Ulrach Branthan as his head rose to face the wall where the Primarch had been.

"Chaos protects."


	2. Introduction

It is a period of failing light. Warmaster Horus Lupercal observes dark changes in the Imperium of Man he serves.

For the nigh-immortal Emperor of Mankind has struck a grim bargain with the four Chaos Gods, eldritch nightmares thirsting for human suffering. The Space Marines, once the Imperium's finest soldiers, are turning into monsters. Ferrus Manus, lord of the Iron Hands and reconqueror of Mars, retains his unshakeable loyalty to the Emperor, but is descending towards madness. Mars itself, once a center of learning and industry, is once more in rebellion, aflame with war. Lupercal is powerless to save Mars, which spins so close to the seat of the Emperor's power, yet nonetheless some sons of his brother Mortarion risk the journey there in order to save what they can.

And unbeknownst to the transhumans fighting on the Martian surface, an ancient star is once more ascendant. A single wanderer arrives on the Red Planet, intending to change everything. All roads lead to the Dragon.

A new path for the galaxy is open, paved with the ashes of worlds. The age of debate and enlightenment is over, but the dream of empire remains.

Only now, it is a black dream.


	3. Chapter One

_One Terran month later_

The victory had lasted a week.

Ferrus Manus had wanted to bring Mars into the Imperium intact, and in time decided to offer amnesty in exchange for a message swearing loyalty. All of Mars had sworn it, and with his father calling for new conquests, many of the Iron Hands were sent away. Ferrus himself stayed on Mars, finishing off the sole forge that had refused to admit defeat.

Then, he had walked into Magos Ahotep's forge, which _had_ surrendered, and had faced weaponry strong enough to drive away even a Primarch.

War spread across the Red Planet once more. And though the Legion was fighting it well enough, it was doing so without First Captain Gabriel Santar. Santar, whom Ferrus Manus had killed. Santar, the only one besides the Primarch and Semyon the Guardian to have known half the truth about the Dragon of Mars (and only the Guardian knew the other half), who – despite that – had nearly ventured into its chamber, for reasons unknown. He had been driven mad by dreams. Did dragons dream?

Did gorgons? Ferrus, at least, did not. He did not see lies at night, nor did he bear hopes for the future. Much of his Legion was descending, falling into Lorgar's and the Gods' waiting arms. Surrendering, even in victory. Some others were murmuring about the Imperium's new direction in the same way that Santar had, at the end. Many simply fought the Martian War, or wars elsewhere, and blotted out the progress they had once idealized. Worst of all, Ferrus wasn't sure which was which. He had lost his Legion, as well as Mars and Santar.

Most of the new Martian rebels were in a loose alliance calling itself the Order of the Dragon. Not all – Koriel Zeth of the Magma City was the primary exception, and there were a number of others. Even the rebel Fabricator Locum, Kane himself, had not officially committed to the Order. What worried Ferrus most was that the object of their worship was, indeed, the Dragon of Mars, a being – so Semyon had described it to him and Santar – of hunger and devastation.

Semyon had that said he despised Chaos, but that it was not his war. And indeed, the Iron Hands still controlled Noctis Labyrinthus. That was not the problem.

The problem was what came after.

The Iron Hands would win the war on Mars, though with heavy losses, and raze every forge of this second rebellion to the ground. Afterwards, they would fight, perhaps even against their cousins – and, at this rate, their brothers. Mars would be placed under a loyal tech-priest's administration, and be rebuilt, though it would of course never be the same. It would take more than the tech-priests he had to lead the rebirth of Mars. Still, they could return industry, if not progress, to the second heart of the Imperium: it would produce enough, with the loyal Forge Worlds, to supply the war effort. And he would return to the field of battle, if he could. All was not lost, not by any account.

But Santar, and Lorgar, and the state of his Legion, and the Gods of Chaos, and his general despair at what he had done and what the Imperium was becoming – those were powerful poisons, strong enough to keep him from successfully warring. And so he sat in the strategium, broken (he was well-aware of that), defeated, and thinking about things other than the strategy for Mars.

He gazed at his iron hands – the body part, not the Legion – which even he did not fully understand. Gained by drowning a wyrm, Asirnoth, in lava. And his Legion, in the days when it had been loyal (in the days when it had reason to be loyal), chose to replace their left hands with bionics. The custom remained, of course; he didn't even know whether Medusa was aware of Santar's death and Ferrus' seclusion. But the meaning behind the concept – a familial bond, expressed in a somewhat absurd way – had gone.

And, of course, his plans to cleanse the Iron Hands of metal were fading too. He believed, had always believed, that humans must triumph through their own strength. That was why he had not asked for help, now, though it could've been given without shame. And that was why he had grown to despise the prevalence of bionics in his Legion. Flesh was weak, but weakness was _real_. And strength, ultimately, came from flesh and weapon – not the fusion of the two.

It was easier for him to say that; he was a Primarch, with some of the strongest flesh in the Imperium. But that didn't make it false. Nevertheless the Iron Hands had embraced the way of the tech-priest, and he could hardly deny that it was an advantage in war. So he, uncharacteristically for himself, had waited; and now it was too late, at Crusade's end.

Because there was rancor between the Primarchs, and very possibly civil war, an eventuality he preferred not to think about. But if Angron had been sent to Magnus' homeworld of Prospero, and was not recalled, then the fate of the galaxy hinged on whether anyone would back the Cyclops. And, truth be told, though Ferrus had little love for Magnus, he had less for Angron; and of all the Primarchs, only Russ and Mortarion might have disagreed with him on this.

The Emperor had erred, perhaps, in only initially revealing his plans to seven of them. But that level of strategy required information he had no idea about. From what he did know, of course, his father's actions seemed borderline insane; and though he would never betray the Emperor, he did not exclude the possibility that things were not going according to his plans. One way or another, the board was almost certainly already set, and play had definitely already begun. As Mars showed.

Ferrus absentmindedly moved Orth's tank spearhead, wondering at why the position in the south was so dismal. They had a better-than-even chance of having to retreat from Noachia entirely. If the retreat happened, the war would last another three years; if not, only another year and a half.

Though by that time, the Emperor would insist on reinforcements. Yet another failure to note, yet another point when weakness had defeated him.

"There is no strength without weakness," he repeated to himself, but the words rang hollow.

"Primarch?" It was Vedumar, his Equerry and Captain of the Twenty-Third Clan-Company. The Space Marine stood behind an iron screen, invisible; Ferrus had not seen another sapient being since Mars caught on fire the second time. He could not bear to, this deep in despair.

"Yes?"

"Cybus is requesting an audience again." Vermanus Cybus wanted leadership of the Avernii Clan-Company, the fabled Morlocks, in the wake of Santar's death.

"I'm not giving him the Avernii."

"I've told him that already," Vedumar said, "but he asks that you appoint _someone_. The First Clan-Company is in a state of total disorder."

Ferrus paused. "Fine. Numen, Desaan, Urgdosev, and two others from the Morlocks, to be chosen by the Morlocks themselves. Let them form an Avernii Council, and command together somehow. One cycle every Medusan year, perhaps."

"My lord, that is… highly irregular. When should this order be executed?"

"I know full well it's irregular!" Ferrus bellowed. "Execute it as soon as the Morlocks give up on my naming someone to Santar's spot. If I change my mind later, the Morlocks can adjust. But I've told you before, Vedumar, and I'll tell you again – Santar was the last First Captain, and there won't be another while I command this Legion!"

"I am aware of that, my lord," Vedumar said. "The Morlocks are another matter."

Ferrus mumbled a dismissal, and Vedumar departed.

That was done. Perhaps Vedumar would not bother him for a while, now that Ferrus had stated his decision. Vedumar, at least, knew the moods of his Primarch. And Ferrus Manus' mood was that of nightfall, even more than was recently standard.

His will was iron, but iron rusted. And right now, it was stuck in acidic rain. Santar. It had all peaked with Santar. But it had begun far, far earlier. It had begun before he had come to Mars, before his father had gathered together seven Primarchs; it had begun not with his weakness, though it had come to just that. It had begun with the weakness of the Imperium.

Chaos, some called the pantheon that was the new Imperial Truth. In truth, no matter what the ancient names involved were, chaos was what they were giving everything to prevent. Chaos was what had been growing, before the Emperor had embraced the doctrine of any means necessary. Sedition, really; even the remembrancers bordered on it. There was a desire to decrease the power of the military, which Ferrus ultimately understood. But beyond that, the old Imperial Truth had been questioned, and in the end had been too weak to stand up to the questioning that it had, itself, encouraged.

The Imperium's foundation, he saw now, had suffered a partial collapse. And did that not mean it had been weak all along?

 _Had there been any point in anything he had done?_

He had no doubt the Emperor's new path was right, though he did not exclude the opposite possibility entirely. But if he had wasted two hundred years of his life, and had, if anything, hurt humanity in them –

He had restarted the Crusade full of fire, a fire of desire for atonement, and had almost saved Mars. His first great mistake had been to fail there. His second, Santar's fate. His third, the disastrous track of the Martian War. And his fourth, in truth, had been secluding himself and thereby losing what was left of his Legion.

Mars and the Legion, Mars and the Legion. Bound together, perhaps forever, by what Ferrus Manus had initially assumed was merely luck and a love for robotics. Had it in fact been the chains of the Dragon's coils?

He did not know, could not be certain. Not of how much of his Legion's path had been determined by dark fate, and not of anything else. All he knew was that any such fate was indeed dark.

Lorgar's star was rising. Ferrus Manus was well-aware of that much. And Lorgar was not the brother that Ferrus wanted to see as second-in-command of the Imperium. Ferrus Manus had nothing against Aurelian as a person, and he could not complain about his lack of fighting skill anymore, now that Lorgar had found himself in this past year, nor did he doubt the Urizen's knowledge of the Warp; but the Word Bearers' Primarch was more focused on bowing to the Warp than ruling it. His father was more in the right, declaring himself and the Primarchs gods. But how could a god be a pope?

They couldn't, of course. Lorgar did not want apotheosis. Lorgar preferred to be a servant, and Father did not need a servant as second-in-command. Malcador had been more than a servant. He wondered where the Sigillite was now. Or Horus, for that matter.

His thoughts tumbled like an endless house of cards, touching brothers and enemies, daemons and xenos, iron and mind. Horus was at war, winning true victories. His own victory had lasted a week. The Red Planet was once more aflame with war, and it was not alone.

Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands, sat unmoving in his strategium, his eyes directed into the past.


	4. Chapter Two

Castrmen Orth looked outside the tank, and saw metal dying.

The Battle of Noachia was going worse than he had expected, though still better than many of his brothers had. His superheavy spearhead was doing well enough, as was the eastern flank, but the Titans of the Legio Magna had broken the Legio Jussa, one of the few Titan Legions that had stayed loyal to Terra. Magna had itself suffered massive casualties, but the central section of the chaotic battle was now in danger of being secured by the traitors, which would put the Order of the Dragon in a dominating position to control three quarters of the planet.

The Iron Hands would have enough forces to win this war no matter how Noachia ended, but if Orth could manage to win, or at least come close to it, in Noachia, they would actually have a path towards doing so.

And that was why Strigeus was so dissatisfied.

"Twelve undamaged Titans, Centurion," his lieutenant voxed from the _Cyclornet_. "With eight more still functional. Two Imperators! They may be scattered, but challenging the Flaming Skulls at the moment, with the forces we have, is suicide."

Orth looked around his Fellblade, _Rashemion_. The crew had heard his suggestion as well as Strigeus, and were also hesitant; but they were also grimly determined.

Superheavy tanks were potent indeed, though not often a match for Titans; but superheavies crewed by Space Marines were more deadly yet. Regardless of speed and durability, the strength and agility advantage of an Astarte over a regular human was massive, and could be leveraged with good tank design. _Rashemion_ had crushed many other tanks of its size during the Great Crusade thanks to that.

Now, it was time for bigger prey. Orth had brought down a xeno Titan of Warlord size before, and it had been a difficult task indeed. But today they were fighting against traitors, and they would do what they had to. Besides, he had significantly more of his brothers with him.

"If we don't face Magna," he told Strigeus, "our side can't do better than an orderly retreat. We might as well propose, and begin to execute, it now, in that case. Should I, in your opinion, do that?"

There was a pause, and then a rumble. "Very well," Strigeus replied. "If it ends thus, then – well, it has been an honor serving under your command." And, switching to the public channels, "For the Emperor!"

"We ride to destroy the remnants of the Titan Legio Magna, allied with the Cult of the Dragon," Orth declared to his battalion. "The god-machines will fall. The flesh is weak, brothers! Fire and Iron!" That was a private cry of the Iron Hands' armor, apart from the rest of the Legion: the most metal-attuned part of the most metal-attuned Legion.

"Fire and Iron!" came the echo, and fifty tanks turned towards the east, to ride across a landscape of flattened metal towards the Titans' location.

Legio Magna was disorganized. They had crushed Jussa, but their leader, the Emperor Titan _Deus Priscus_ , had fallen in the process. Now each Princeps chased the Iron Hands' Army and Mechanicum support forces, and even some Iron Hand infantry, in something quite far from a battle. Perhaps one could call it a hunt, though one where the Titans were toying with their prey.

The tank battalion's treads spun, as Orth checked whether anyone else was in position to help with the attack (they weren't), and soon enough the first of the Titans became visible over the horizon. It was an intact Reaver; how well this went would determine whether Orth's charge was worth it.

Orth bellowed orders, the Titan not noticing the Iron Hands in its assault on a single tech-priest, who was sufficiently small and agile to dodge the god-machine again and again as it tried to crush him into oblivion. Smiling at the odd sight, Castrmen Orth ordered the tanks to start surrounding the Reaver.

They were within range by the time the Titan noticed them, having finally kicked the tech-priest away. He flew into the distance, though it was possible that he would be able to survive this.

"Fire!"

Round after round punched into the Reaver's ankle. The massive war machine replied by swiveling, but it was already on the brink of toppling – the combined fire of fifty heavy and superheavy tanks was not to be underestimated. The enemy shot went wide, digging a crater in the distance, and then the Titan skidded, and with an earth-shattering thud, fell. Pieces rolled off the machine, but Orth was already ordering the tanks to concentrate fire again, and the Titan's head shattered. Princeps and Moderati were dead within minutes.

"The rest won't be as easy," Strigeus noted.

"I sure hope they won't!" exclaimed Orius Ousautro, another of Orth's lieutenants. Orth found it hard to disagree, though he was forced to do so. The Titan had, in any case, trapped itself, not expecting anything to attack it. As the tanks rode on, Orth considered the fact that none of the others would make that mistake. Legio Magna knew they were under assault now, and would react accordingly.

The next up were a pair of Warhounds. Unlike the Reaver, they were fully aware of the danger. A plasma bolt sped by, barely missing one of the Fellblades. The two Falchions, two of the six that the Iron Hands had on Mars, responded with a blast from their fiery Volcano Cannons. Meanwhile, the other tanks fired accordingly. _Rashemion_ was lagging behind the rest of the group, its machine-spirit less eager than the others, as were a few of the other engines.

Orth grit his teeth in frustration at that. Still, even if he couldn't participate in the fight personally, the situation allowed him to direct the spearhead. He ordered the Falchions to focus on the slightly larger Warhound, which appeared damaged; they blasted it again and again, even as it spun on its leg to avoid the shots and lay down a curtain of fire. The smaller Warhound, realizing it was outgunned, thought of retreat for a second, and leapt back, but Orth had already placed a pair of Valdors in its way. Then the larger Titan stumbled, and Orth swung a cordon of smaller tanks towards it, while the smaller was pierced by the Valdors' neutron projectors. It screeched to a halt, but responded by sending a dozen rounds into one of the Valdors.

This was what Orth lived for. Metal against metal, for the glory of the Imperium. From iron cometh strength, the Iron Warriors said; but the Iron Hands knew that such a statement was tautological, for iron simply _was_ strength. Though Orth was not currently fighting himself, he still experienced the same glorious feeling from the clash of enormous war machines. And he was good at it; he was the youngest of the three Spearhead-Centurions of the Iron Hands collectively known as the Young Squid, for the animal that was sometimes an emblem for the Iron Hands' armor. The others were Cadmus Qevpilum, currently commanding an expedition to find legendary archaeotech on the lost planet of Pyrrhia, and Uninen Rochaar, bogged down in eastern Noachia, besieging the forge of Magos Pyrnetius with no progress.

This specific skirmish, though, was quickly becoming a massacre. One of the Valdors exploded, but after its last lucky shot, so did the Titan it was opposing, scattering shards of metal far enough that they pattered _Rashemion_ like hail. Meanwhile, the larger Titan, regarding which Orth had checked with Ulrach Branthan's fleet and found out had originally been whole after all, was rent apart by volley after volley, kneeling and then collapsing.

As it got pounded completely into dust, as Orth ordered the battalion onwards, he took a tally of the losses. One Valdor, with the brothers that had manned it, completely lost; two more tanks damaged with surviving crew. These were not losses whose rate they could afford to sustain if they wanted to wipe out Magna. But it would take much less than that to turn the tide of the war. If they could even so much as halve Magna's strength, they would be in a position where the battle could suddenly be won.

The spearhead rolled on. Meanwhile, Orth checked for the overall disposition of Legio Magna. They had recognized the danger, and had organized themselves into two major groups, which were seeking to converge. If they did, Orth's hunt would be over. Fortunately, one of the two (the one, as it happened, that did not include an Emperor Titan) was close to their positions. Eight Titans: three intact Warhounds, and five Battle Titans, three of them damaged and two whole. A group they could probably eliminate, if with significant losses – less significant if they could actually bring all their forces to bear this time.

Then Tumez reported that the machine-spirit was finally awake, or put another way, the programming bug that had restricted the _Rashemion_ 's speed had been crushed; and Orth grinned. It was no feral grin, such as that one of the Space Wolves might have shown; it was, rather, simply the certain smile of a Space Marine who knew he was where he needed to be, and would be able to deal the Emperor's enemies the death they deserved.

Not too long after, at the edge of the bombed-out open terrain, before the wall of Magos Larnatie's abandoned forge, Orth's spearhead slammed into the running Titans. Forty-seven tanks, this time with their energies combined. Shots rang out, and as the Titans reoriented themselves, the Reaver almost immediately fell onto the forge wall. One down; seven left.

The scout Titans charged first, the Warlords' guns providing cover and their long-range weapons sending deadly ammunition into the Iron Hands' ranks. Two tanks were lost in single hits. But the Falchions responded worthily, creating a wall of fire in front of the Scout Titans that both damaged them and prevented them from moving forwards; one of the Warlords, unable to stop its charge, actually slammed into a Warhound, sending both into a precariously balanced state – before Rashemion and two other Fellblades punched into the Warhound, their accelerator cannons sufficient to crush its mobility and simultaneously send it toppling backward. Two more Titans down.

And then the battle began in earnest.

Volcano cannons against volcano cannons, mega-bolters and turbo-lasers against accelerator cannons and neutron projectors, fire against fire, metal against metal; death against death, and perfection against perfection. Orth had fought mighty xeno machinery before, but such things were fundamentally impure, nothing compared to the glory of the Mechanicum's engines, even if they were comparable in might. Now he measured himself and his battalion against the truest mirror enemy one could find, discounting other Astartes.

And, perhaps, even counting them. For enemy Titans were perhaps closer than most Space Marines to Orth's mechanistic ideals.

In the hellstorm, Orth screamed out orders, even as a Warlord's shot grazed _Rashemion_ 's right side. The Scout Titans fell first, the smoke hiding who fired the shots that ended them. The three remaining Warlords put down huge quantities of firepower, and tanks flipped on their back from the shock wave; but that, in itself, gave Orth an idea, and a concentrated explosion sent two of the Warlords simultaneously out of balance from the same wave. They swung, trying desperately to rebalance themselves, only to get crippled and downed by the remaining tanks.

The skirmish was nearly won, with thirty-three tanks (many of them damaged) remaining of Orth's already half-strength spearhead; but the centurion cursed as he realized what the motion he was seeing to the cupola's back was. The final Warlord saw its head explode in fire from the Falchions, both of which had somehow miraculously survived thus far; but in the distance, close enough that there was no hope of hiding from them, nine more god-machines, the remnants of Legio Magna, approached. And at their back….

Two mountains, blotting out the sky (that part of it the smoke hadn't yet finished off). Two kings, two legends, two dooms. Two Emperor-class Titans.

Orth, cursing, redeployed the battalion, and sent a final ping to Branthan in orbit. Ousatro said the same.

"I meant what I said," Strigeus observed. "It's been a good decade under you, centurion."

"It's not over yet," Orth replied. "If we can get one of the Emperors down, or enough of the others, the tide will turn from our sacrifice – not just of the battle, but of the war. And some of us may well survive."

And then Orth got the ping back from Branthan, and smiled.

"Forward!" he exclaimed. "I want an Emperor kill! Fire and Iron! The flesh is weak!"

The battalion rolled forward, inspired by their leader's seemingly suicidal courage, and the Titans of Legio Magna began firing; the last Valdor fell, Orth barely able to spare a glance for his fallen brothers. But the Falchions brought down a Warhound, Magna's last, almost immediately, and then began focusing on the Emperor-class that stepped forward.

And then the other Emperor-class fell under a single, fiery volley.

Titans were mighty, but they weren't always very observant in their battle-rage, as that first Reaver had clearly showed; and now, as Orth's tanks punched into the Emperor closer to him, Uninen Rochaar's ninety-four battle engines slammed into Legio Magna's back. There was fire, smoke, and utter destruction. _Rashemion_ fired with the last of its power, and Orth grinned as the Emperor overloaded in trying to spin around to face a new foe, the shot hitting an exposed position and leading to a chain reaction.

A minute later, both Emperors were down, and the _Rashemion_ 's crew, despite being on the verge of running out of power, broke into massive cheers.

"For the Emperor!" Orth shouted, and the _Rashemion_ replied with ten times the volume. Then he voxed Rochaar. "Thanks for that. What about the siege?"

"Abandoned. It was hopeless anyway."

"Without Ferrus' orders?"

"Did you have the Primarch's orders for this suicidal assault?"

Orth laughed loudly, caught up in the moment. It was well-known that Ferrus Manus hadn't given military orders for at least a week. "Really, Rochaar, thanks for that. I'll have to pay you back sometime."

"Even my cog's having trouble keeping up with the Young Squid's debts to each other," the other centurion replied.

Orth smiled again, and as the cupola opened, looked into the sky. A smoky dusk was settling onto the plains of Noachia. The battle was nearly won, but the war was far from over, and iron would yet cause much death.

But Orth didn't much care, and truthfully, he knew none of the Young Squid did. They were warriors, and this was a war for humanity's soul, dealing as it did with treason against the divinity of the Emperor. And he would continue to fight it for as long as he was able.

With fire and iron, and endless resolve.


	5. Chapter Three

Magos Srequi Lantrane looked into the faraway fire, and saw an end to the work of millennia – for better or for worse.

The Dragon of Mars slumbered, somewhere. Its thoughts had uplifted the human race. The Emperor had trapped it, but nevertheless, through dreams and whispers, it had turned Mars into a center of innovation. Knowledge beyond that developed anywhere else in the human portions of the galaxy bloomed. The Golden Age of Technology had begun. And when the folly of men ended that dream, the Mechanicum remained, the last fragment of the Golden Age.

Only it was not the last. The Emperor remained, and rebuilt humanity. And then, of course, he decided to tear it all down. And through it all, the Dragon remained sleeping, and gave hope to mankind - until this hour. For now the Emperor, the Dragon's eternal enemy, would claim Mars. It would, at best, be rebuilt as a center of industry, but the supernatural inspiration would be gone. And so they had to free the Dragon, for a final battle.

At least, that was how the leadership of the Order of the Dragon explained the scope of this war; and Lantrane saw it, logically, as a sensible explanation – the only sensible explanation – of this apocalypse. And the dreams were real, for all that she was mostly metal. She saw the Dragon, resplendent in glory, though it was all too difficult to describe precisely how it looked.

And so she had joined the Order, like almost all of the surviving Magi of Mars. Some of them threw in their lot with the Emperor, who had killed Kelbor-Hal and now ordered Mars set to flames. These were traitors, not only to the Dragon and to humanity, but to Mars. They were Magi no longer; that much the new Fabricator-General, Kane, had clearly decreed.

But, Lantrane considered as she watched the flames from a safe distance, he had not clearly decreed much else. And it was still unclear whether Kane was truly with the Order of the Dragon, who bore the only path to Mars's salvation, or if he remained stubbornly loyal to the ideal of the Omnissiah even as its avatar betrayed progress.

And so she stood before Kane's forge, observing the fires of distant battle and waiting to talk to the Fabricator-General - in person, for this was not a discussion long-range comms sufficed for.

The doors in front of her were decorated with images of grinding cogs, of various types, in fractal patterns. Above them, a golden ribbon was curiously blank. Before, Lantrane knew from her previous visits to the then-Fabricator Locum, it had had the face of the Emperor carved on it. But though Kane had been more loyal to Terra than Kelbor-Hal, he was no traitor, and when Ferrus Manus relayed the Emperor's command to end the Mechanicum, he defied it with every neuron in his body.

Martian independence; that was what this had been all about, at first. It was only after that it had become a matter of religious war.

The doors swung open.

"Greeting: It has been too long since I last saw you, Magos Lantrane," Kane said in binary with a smile.

"Greeting: Likewise to you. Curse: The war has kept high-ranking Magi from meeting each other often, for fear of another massacre."

"Curse: The war is infuriating to us all. Hope: We can still, however, win it, despite the defeat in Noachia."

Lantrane nodded, and accepted Kane's offered mechatendril, walking into the Fabricator General's forge center. They stood on a catwalk, overseeing servitors and tech-priests scurrying about on the floor below. Beyond them lay a second door into Kane's central, quiet sanctum; but the Fabricator General indicated they should talk here, in noise and not in silence.

Lantrane decided not to wait to state her purpose. "Declaration: To win this war, the loyal tech-priests of Mars must stand united."

"Agreement: We must indeed. Query: Are you here to invite me into the Order of the Dragon?"

"Affirmative."

"Intent: I will join your order, though you must understand that at this stage I have no faith in it yet, under the condition that you save my forge. Explanation: Many in my personal forces were lost during the Athabasca victory."

"Agreement: Your forge is in a strategic location, and you are personally crucial. Intent: We will honor that bargain."

"Query: You, or the Order?"

"Explanation: I was not sent here without consultations as to what the Order would accept."

Kane smiled again. It would have been difficult for most to understand that he was doing that, the metal on his hooded face obscuring the gesture, but Lantrane had known Kane for a long time. "Memory: There were days when you would have done just that, and I would have accepted it without doubt. Declaration: All of us have become darker with time."

"Curse: Especially the times."

"Query: Why, precisely, did you join the Order? Explanation: Your being in the Order is the only reason I accepted without further debate."

Lantrane shrugged in what she knew was a peculiarly human way. "Explanation: The Order offered the only explanation of the times that both made sense and gave us an option with nonzero worth. Fear: If we win this war, the Emperor will only send more armies."

"Fear: The Iron Hands are bad enough, but a second army will level Mars to the ground."

"Confusion: Was Noachia not, in fact, leveled to the ground?"

"Explanation: I have not been keeping up with the situation, but I suspect Noachia was a special case. Explanation: That battle was the only thing that kept the Iron Hands ahead in the war."

"Comprehension."

They stood, for a time, in binary silence, looking at some of the last intact industry left in the Red Planet's northern hemisphere. It was a beautiful case of efficiency, sadly turned nearly exclusively to war (the remnant being devoted to providing basic needs to the Martians). Lantrane contemplated her own forge, whose production had been cut in half by an Iron Hand offensive that had only been beaten back by Titans.

But by this point, that was the least of their problems. Tharsis was a patchwork of Order and Iron Hand control. The south was almost entirely the Order's, but most of the rest of the north was Ferrus Manus's. And the Iron Hands had won in Noachia, opening the gates to the South Pole.

Lantrane considered the last of the major holdouts against the Order among the loyal Mechanicum: Magos Koriel Zeth, Mistress of the Magma City, who openly defied the Dragon. She, too, had once been a friend, but had also closely followed the Imperial Truth. There were rumors she did not even believe in the Omnissiah. Nevertheless, Zeth had been one of the primary drivers of innovation in the days before this mad war. She had, like Lantrane herself, pushed the boundaries of what the Mechanicum could achieve.

Kane had always been more cautious. He had, now, chosen to be cautious until it was clear the Order had taken loyal Mars. But it mattered little; the Fabricator General being on their side was a propaganda victory, regardless of his true faith.

The Order's rise had, of course, been meteoric. It had gone from a minor heretical sect to the last hope of the Red Planet and the Mechanicum. Many of the outlying worlds had emphatically refused to accept it, and indeed the majority of Forge Worlds that Mars had contact with still supported the Omnissiah and the Emperor, at least officially. Privately, of course, most of those planets were sending communications plotting rebellion to Mars and presumably each other; but the Dragon was an afterthought at best. Mars had embraced it, in the end, from desperation. It was too close to Terra to endure otherwise.

But Lantrane really did believe in it, and in time, so would Kane. In fact, as Fabricator General, he would have abundant access to other communications, perhaps more of them than even the Order's central command. But now was not the time to ask about that.

They stood, observing the wondrous industrial landscape and composing private plans for the future, and Lantrane thought back to the day when the news had spread across Mars, like wildfire, of Ferrus Manus's obliteration of Kelbor-Hal's council. Fortuitously, many important Magi were not present at that council, due in large part to personal disagreements with Kelbor-Hal's path. She, for her own part, had agreed with the Fabricator-General in most of Martian philosophy, but had had a major argument with him regarding Koriel Zeth not long before, and after the falling-out had retreated to her own forge.

In truth, the massacre had done little good; for the dead Magi's successors chose resistance over surrender as well. They could rationally deduce it might be better for them, personally, to surrender, but the good of humanity had to be included into all such calculations.

She looked at Kane, and saw a man who had given up on this sort of factional infighting. He was beginning to become the Fabricator-General in truth, a less abrasive and radical one than Kelbor-Hal had been, as well as perhaps a less logistically brilliant one, but a worthy successor anyhow.

"Query: What will any potential rebellion outside the Mechanicum think of the Order of the Dragon?" Kane inquired. "Fear: Its religious nature might destroy our chances of allying with any other resistance movements that spring up to protect the Imperial Truth."

And that was true, especially since most of the Order's members were far more religious than Lantrane herself. But it mattered not. "Declaration: Such resistance movements should either follow us or ignore us," she said. "Declaration: Mars will never kneel again."

"Agreement: Mars will never kneel again," Kane said, "to anyone."


	6. Interlude: Dragon

It slept. And in its sleep, it dreamt furiously.

Because (its conscious mind, small as it was during its endless rest, knew) things had deviated from its plans. Because, in time past time, everything was more wrong now than ever. Because it was quite possible that the End Times had come, though it would need more than ghostcode to know for sure.

It slept, imprisoned by the Emperor in a time before he had embraced darkness. And it contemplated technology. It was, it knew, only half of the being that once made the stars shake in fear, regathered from even smaller pieces; but even in the time it had been whole, it had admired technology. It was a wondrous thing, a perfect tool of the minor races and interesting even for ones such as what Mag'ladroth had been. And, indeed, though its memories were far from whole, it considered the possibility – very real, at least to its mind – that technology was what had created the C'tan in the first place, out of the true firstborn of the stars.

And now, half of the Void Dragon, with perhaps one-eighth its power, slumbered and hoped. Hoped that this was not yet finality, and that it would be able to remain. But for ones such as the Dragon of Mars, hope was no more than an enjoyable distraction. Totality was impending, almost certainly. And so it made its play.

The Dragon slept. And in its sleep, it dreamt furiously. And in those dreams, shared by many thousands of cultists across the Red Planet, it whispered four words.

"Noctis Labyrinthus. Free me."


	7. Chapter Four

Cadmus Qevpilum looked at the still-distant star, and thought of Sol.

Sol, humanity's home system, the place where mankind had first lived and thought and dreamt. Sol was relatively young, in universal terms, but still ancient beyond human comprehension. Deep, geologic time was beyond the ability of most to understand in more than a basic and numerical sense. That, fortunately, was enough for all practical purposes.

And yet Qevpilum, an outright philosopher when compared to the other Young Squid but considered a straightforward soldier by most Space Marines, still wanted to understand it. He wondered if any neural bionics could give that ability. It was quite possible; but he had no wish to experiment on himself with such things, not yet.

He led a large Iron Hand fleet, now, sharing command with Captain Durun Bylomic of the 31st. It was a comfortable arrangement for both of them. Qevpilum was, officially, in charge of fleet operations and the Iron Hands' armor, whereas Bylomic had the rest of the ground command. In practice, the two of them collaborated on all parts of the operation.

That operation was an unusual one.

Pyrrhia was a legendary planet in eastern Segmentum Obscurus. Some claimed it was run by abominable intelligences, others that it was infested by Warp-spawned undead. In any case, it was an ancient place, and supposedly held abundant archaeotech from both the humans of Golden Age of Technology and xenos of earlier times. Qevpilum and Bylomic were here to retrieve the former and destroy the latter so the Mechanicum's heretics would not, in their idiocy, use it and doom humanity.

Personally, Qevpilum thought the Mechanicum was probably smarter than that, but desperation could lead even the tech-priests to senseless decisions. And desepration was exactly what those enemies of the Imperium were now feeling. Ferrus Manus himself was leading punitive operations on Mars, with Orth and Rochaar among his main subordinates. A significant portion of the Legion had been sent away, but even half of the Iron Hands was an army to make the stars shake. Qevpilum only worried about the loss of knowledge suffered in Mars's conquest, for everything else was predetermined. The Primarch was, admittedly, recalling much of the Legion back to Mars, but it had been made clear that this was not an order to be immediately carried out, but rather a tasking after the completion of current missions.

"The Pyrrhian system awaits," Qevpilum's lieutenant Tlaar Hemcasi observed.

"It was lost for a long time," the centurion answered, "as you know. No one knew where it was, which system was actually Pyrrhia. But it seems evident that this is the world we have been looking for."

"Too easy, in your opinion?"

"I would hardly call an investigation of fifty busy days 'too easy', Tlaar. And we have few records of previous searches for Pyrrhia. But, yes, I suspect the search will not end here. This is Pyrrhia, but I am far from sure our mission is that close to being done."

Hemcasi nodded and departed towards the training decks. This battle barge – _Ironsoul_ , the Young Squid's combined flagship – had them in abundance, though more for tank simulations than for personal combat. Bylomic's own ships glimmered in the distance, as well as those of the mortal auxiliaries attached to the Tenth Legion.

Everything was ready, the board set for the final investigation of one of the greatest mysteries the Mechanicum had ever believed in. Perhaps there was even an intact STC there, one that would allow the loyal portions of the Mechanicum to finally go forward from the peaks of the Golden Age into new destinies. It would, also, be an enormous coup for the Emperor, and settle the Great Crusade once and for all.

But it was also tremendously unlikely, and not even worth dreaming of. Cadmus Qevpilum looked around the fleet again, contemplating the opposite end of the spectrum regarding the success of this endeavor: total failure. Perhaps there was nothing of note on Pyrrhia, and its legendary reputation was but a myth. Or, perhaps, Pyrrhia was real, but was rigged to detonate – and would, upon some human's unlucky mistake, explode in a way that destroyed the entire fleet. It was not the death that worried Qevpilum about that eventuality, but the complete failure.

Pyrrhia's star kept on shining in the distance, inconsiderate of the glory or infamy Qevpilum could yet achieve. The Iron Hand thought about his friends – both the Young Squid, and acquaintances in other Legions like Uwix Azhordinocemin (more frequently called Azh) of the Iron Warriors and Durak Rask of the Death Guard, as well as, of course, Dasara of the Emperor's Children. They were fighting on the front lines of the Great Crusade, crushing xenos and traitors, bringing glory to the Emperor and the Imperium. It was past time for him to join them.

"Pyrrhian Task Force," he ordered, "sigma-hippo formation."

The shining ships exploded into movement, and the _Ironsoul_ itself took its place in the formation, slowly rotating to bring its guns to bear against any potential enemy. There didn't seem to be any, of course. The stars were silent as ever, and lost Pyrrhia, invisible from so far away, quietly spun around its orange sun.

Qevpilum breathed in, and imagined he was taking in the stardust of the blackness before him, filled as it was with countless candles that, perhaps, seemed to signify hope. To the lower right of his screen, the titanic Cygnus Warp Storm, the most recent and biggest such place to blight and (according to Lorgar's new teachings) bless the galaxy, swallowed the sky. It was majestic, in its own way, but swirling and illogical. Qevpilum preferred the brilliant clarity of the stars. They were the reason life, and through it any movement in the Warp, had begun at all. Humans, machines, xenos, and ultimately even Warp entities, all owed their existence to the simple process of nuclear fusion induced by gravitational collapse of titanic molecular clouds.

Simple, meaning relatively easy to understand; but far from easy to control. And yet humanity had moved stars, in the time when it had supposedly dwelled on Pyrrhia. Qevpilum watched as the last of the human ships slotted into their positions for the formation.

"Towards the second planet," Qevpilum said, sending out the course. "Forward! Fire and Iron! For the Emperor!"

And the Pyrrhian Task Force set off, daggers against the immobile stars, piercing the vacuum of the Materium in an arc that would terminate, Qevpilum knew, at Pyrrhia.

Except it didn't.

An explosion rang out; in the silence of space, all that could be seen was the golden fireball that used to be the _Silver Momentum_. Qevpilum gave down slowing orders, scanning the area for more mines. They were there, albeit somewhat cloaked, in an erratic pattern that was impossible to predict. They were, however, few enough to pass through, presumably because other ships had already attempted to enter this place.

More cautiously, the task force's ships (excepting the two others that exploded from the mines) spread out and continued slowly moving towards the distant world. Qevpilum groaned at having walked right into the trap, at the brothers that had died due to the oversight. Still, if this was all –

Suddenly, the mines ended; and light-seconds later, space shifted, and the stars shattered. Reality had changed. Looking back, the centurion could see that reality behind them remained the same. As the _Ironsoul_ coasted to a stop, he ran up a flight of stairs onto the bridge, which was in chaos.

"What happened?" Hemcasi asked him, with an impressive amount of calm.

"Another defense system," Qevpilum said as his mind tried to recall the basic equations of latter M-theory. "Bizarre as it sounds, someone managed to twist space. And it… it is not simply a matter of a single twist. We are in a labyrinth wherein the fabric of reality has been altered."

"Can we pass?" Hemcasi asked.

"With difficulty," Qevpilum said, comparing his options. Only one would allow them to move forward. "I'll need a noospheric connection to both the ship and the Grandest Cogitator. Zerondem," he ordered his other lieutenant present, "follow me. Your mind's capacity for calculation is one of the brightest in the Legion, making you the best option to steer the _Ironsoul_ through this maze. I will assist with ship direction. Hemcasi, tell the other ships to follow us."

The bridge crew looked around in severe surprise, and in some cases terror. The Grandest Cogitator was a monstrous edifice to many of them, a piece of archaeotech that had not been turned on in ten years, since the day it had been corralled the Hrud migration of 992.M30 that had threatened the galactic core – at the cost of the minds of twenty serfs responsible for its upkeep, and very nearly that of Qevpilum himself, who had been plugged into it then. By any measure, it had been a worthwhile sacrifice, but Qevpilum could not prevent his skin, even its metallic parts, from crawling at the very thought of the arcane device.

But there was no choice, and no retreat. So the two Astartes descended to the Grandest Cogitator's chamber, and initiated start-up.

"What are the odds of... _most of_ my mind surviving this?" Zerondem asked.

"A total of eighty percent, including there and back, would be my estimate," Qevpilum answered. "Your mind is more mathematical, more capable of managing the Cogitator than mine. But we will not be able to afford an abort, for there will be no way of getting out."

"Fire and Iron, then," Zerondem said, as before a battle.

"Fire and Iron," Qevpilum agreed. "And Brother Venth Zerondem, immediately tell me if you will be able to handle this. If not – " and his stubbornness would be enough to balance out the initial feeling of being overwhelmed, meaning it would be an accurate assessment – "then we will retreat, because even that is preferable to being lost in here forever."

The Cogitator whirred into life, even as Qevpilum retrieved the noocables. He put on his helmet, and plugged them in.

For a moment, he was the _Ironsoul_ , and felt it more vividly than his own body, losing his sense of identity; but the gene-seed of Ferrus Manus reasserted itself, and Cadmus Qevpilum was in control. The ship was still clearer than his own body, but its consciousness was only a glimmer of a machine-spirit, and his was a Space Marine of the Tenth Legion. Cadmus Qevpilum looked, with his own eyes and the lenses of a dozen cameras, at Lieutenant Venth Zerondem.

What he saw caused a feeling of triumph. Zerondem raised the Cogitator's helmet, the machine fully alive, and placed it on his head; then he passed a cable along his arm, and touched Qevpilum's helm.

"Is everything acceptable?" Qevpilum asked Zerondem, who was frozen in thought with a smile on his face.

"This is wonderful!" Zerondem exclaimed with childish exuberance. "How could you ever bear to lose this, Cadmus? These towers of thought… these wondrous infinities?"

Ah. It made sense that Zerondem would be the one happy to embrace the Grandest Cogitator. "They were darker," Qevpilum said, "for me than they seem to be for you. Forward, then?"

"Forwaaaard!" Zerondem exclaimed, feeding Qevpilum data in his mania. Qevpilum instantly steered the ship, and the _Ironsoul_ , and the armada behind it, flew towards the heart of the maze.

Towards Pyrrhia.


	8. Chapter Five

Durak Rask looked up at his Primarch, Mortarion, the Death Lord and the Dusk Prince, scion of Barbarus and Luna, and a trueborn son of the Emperor who had, for once, endured what the Emperor himself could not – the temptation to declare himself a god.

Mortarion was toweringly tall and relatively gaunt, with an ashen face bereft of any sort of hair. His many weapons were affixed to his belt or back, but the Deathshroud next to him held their scythes at the ready. And his collar continued to emit toxic gas, which did not seem to bother the Primarch at all at this stage.

This was Rask's father. This was Rask's savior.

This was a man who – along with nine other Primarchs – had been forced into rebellion against a mad Emperor, against a new tyrant, once again into the smoke of war. That was the trajectory, it seemed, of his life.

"I have a mission for you," Mortarion said, "my most fervent son."

Rask nodded, at rapt attention.

"Mars," Mortarion said, "is in rebellion against the Emperor, for he has betrayed the Treaty he once forged with the Red Planet and its Mechanicum and allowed Ferrus Manus to kill their leader, Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal, for supposedly no reason at all besides boredom with negotiations. The outer Forge Worlds report Mars is crying for help; but it is close to Terra, too close to be capable of holding it."

Rask nodded again, but in truth he felt somewhat confused. "I will do as you ask, my lord, but how would I even get into the Sol system without getting shot to pieces?"

"Ah," Mortarion said, " _that_ is why we are _here_." The Death Lord swung his left arm around and indicated the barren, sandy plain they were standing on, a dry ocean bed on a forgotten lifeless rock named Almenis, and specifically the ramp dug downwards into it. "Walk with me."

And Artillery Squad Rask followed their Primarch into the dugout. Rask was still confused, but he had no doubt whatsoever that the Primarch had a plan.

"There is an object that we dug up some time ago," the Death Lord said. "It is a vertical rock circle, with the appearance of a gate – an open gate. As it turns out, it leads into another realm, onto a surreal road. One can walk this road; there are many gates adjacent to it, all of them closed, but the gates on the road itself are both open. In the end, one comes to another gate, the first one found, one currently closed." He looked over his shoulder at Rask and his fourteen-man squad, as they came to the open gate. "That gate is at the heart of the Magma City, Rask. Magos Koriel Zeth's forge on Mars."

Rask knelt, the squad following suit. "What do you wish for me to do, my lord?"

"Something so insane," Mortarion said, "so audacious, that few in the Legion would accept it. But Perturabo ensured, when he got the key to the Martian gate, that a tech-priest near his own beliefs would possess the Magma City; and Koriel Zeth will never worship the Emperor, he assured me. And though we have little love for each other, I believe him without hesitation on that. As it is, he gave me the key as a gift, when we attempted to settle our differences; and I had this second gate excavated.

"Your squad – if you accept, for I could never force anyone to do this – will pass through the gate, and use the given key to open the Martian gate, which is about two hours of an Astarte's walk away. I will warn you to walk quickly, for those that have stayed on the road for too long have been lost. Then, if there is anyone loyal to humanity still on Mars, you will get them and as much of their equipment as you can through the gate and run back to Almenis, closing the gate behind you.

"The only problem is that many reports state that Mars is still uniformly hostile, fully loyal to the God-Emperor. I am not given to hope, Rask, and I do not believe Mars has surrendered, as is claimed. The tech-priests are logical enough that they would have done that, but not against a tyrant such as that the Emperor has become. Still, Ferrus' entire Legion is on the planet. You will have ten squads in total, no more, and I freely admit it is because I fear your quest is doomed, and you must prepare for a fast retreat if necessary."

"As is your will," Rask said, "my lord." It was a suicide mission, in a sense, or at least one that had a high chance of being thus; but dying for his Primarch was always how it was supposed to end. "Ten squads?"

"They will arrive soon," Mortarion said, and looking back, Rask saw drop pods. "The other reason that I chose you, of course, is your skill with machinery. We have too few such as you in the Legion, so I would prefer if you came back; but if it is impossible, well, everything ends."

"Aye," Durak Rask said, "everything ends. Especially tyranny. As you desire, my lord, so it shall be done. For the sake of humanity."

Mortarion nodded, seemingly in pride, and nine squads walked up behind Rask's force.

"I shall depart," the Dusk Prince said, "but do not forget this, Rask. Mars has burned, and if I am right it will burn again. Priceless knowledge will be lost, and your duty is to save what you can. Yet you do this not for the knowledge, but for the war effort. There are those who say that such an approach will lead to a new dark age; they are right. So will any other approach, in a galactic war like this one. No doubt there will come a new dusk… hour infernal. But such is the cycle of our rust; such our arc eternal."

As the Death Lord spoke the last words, he passed Rask a small, black cubic box pulsing with green light, turned, and walked to the Stormbird that had carried him and Rask's squad onto the surface of Almenis.

Rask turned to the men under his command, who waited expectantly, especially those who had not heard the Primarch's description.

"The Primarch has decreed," Rask said, and as he did so noted that his group was a mix of the most devoted and the most technologically inclined warriors in the Legion, "that we are to go through this gate, and walk to Mars." Incredulity was evident on their features. "It is an ancient technological marvel of unknown provenance –" this he was uncertain of, but it clearly could not be sorcery if Mortarion had chosen it – "and with the key I hold in my hand, it will permit us to pass into the Magma City forge therein. Our mission is to save as much equipment and personnel from the Martian forges as is possible from the war that rages on the Red Planet's surface, to enable knowledge and industry to be saved, for the Warmaster, for the Primarch, and most importantly, for the human race, to use against those who would oppress it. It is possible that this war is already lost; then we must manage a quick retreat."

The hundred and thirty-nine Death Guard before him silently brought their fists to their chests. Rask had never commanded quite this many of his brothers before.

"Forward," he quietly said, "for Mortarion."

And they walked forwards, into the stone circle (which Rask now realized was much more than that, inscribed with symbols and intricate circuitry), two hundred and eighty feet marching onto a printless road.

The place inside was lit dimly, by lines of variously colored radiance that stretched along the corridor. Rask walked ahead of the rest, the key attached to his belt, observing the utter blackness that seemed to fill this place outside of the lightlines. It was strange, but not quite supernatural.

They walked, in rows of five, Rask at the center of the front; from time to time, they passed by what appeared to be side doors, which were indeed uniformly locked. Presumably Perturabo's key would not open those. So the Death Guard marched forward, through a winding path, instead. It curved emphatically, moreso as time went on, in some places seeming to try and get the Death Guard to turn around; but that would have been a hopeless endeavor.

Rask contemplated the squads he had been assigned. Rurgon and Falenatak were sergeants of fellow artillery squads; Lgalun and Riolasa, meanwhile, were ranked as sergeants of ground troops, but had truly earned their renown in void war, and in Lgalun's case as the author of Tyranny and Weakness, an attempt to describe in detail just what the Fourteenth Legion stood against. Sostoar managed a substantial part of the Fourteenth Legion's small armor division. Saxeost, Pralgro, Sofev, and Mineceno, meanwhile, Rask knew little more about than their position as infantry sergeants and their zeal. Mineceno in particular nearly worshipped the Primarch to a degree even Rask found disturbing; some said he reached the point of violating the Imperial Truth.

Somewhat earlier than Rask had expected, and three and a half minutes before Mortarion's prediction of two hours, the other gate became visible. It had been an uneventful passage, though Rask had no way of knowing whether that was the norm.

The ring he faced seemed, from a distance, to be simply a stone circle around reddish silver that shone with a gentle light. In the center of the silver region, there was a cubic indentation, with a protrusion at its center. Rask took the cube from his belt, noted that only one side had a hole for the protrusion, and attached the cube. It pulsed, a brief flash of green, and then turned on with a steady red glow. Rask attempted to turn it in either direction, neither giving any effect.

"Open, surn you!" Rask swore in Barbarusan.

At the first word, the door glowed, and then the metal slid to either side, retreating with the cube. Eventually, the cube remained in an indentation within the ring of false stone. Through the portal, Durak Rask could see the heart of the Magma City.

And even to one such as him, the sight was marvelous.

Below, far below, there was a lava lake's light. Above it, countless catwalks crossed the cavern, nearly blocking out the orange glow, probably with machinery of their own that Rask could not see. Ahead of the Death Guard, there was the back of a command throne, and some distance beyond it the narrow metal platform, with railings at its sides, suddenly widened into a full floor, blotting out the view downward. Rask had no idea what a number of the mechanical wonders therein did, but he recognized that they were doing it right now, filling the hall with a metallic din.

It was, fundamentally, a factory, one dedicated to production of everything imaginable; and it was active. Hammers rang, belts sang, and altogether an impression was created of controlled chaos.

"Close," Rask said in High Gothic, putting his hand on the key cube. The gate fluttered shut once more in a flurry of silver and crimson. "Open," also in High Gothic, and the gate obeyed. The master of ordnance nodded.

"Forward," he said, turning back at the column of Death Guard, and the warriors of the Fourteenth Legion stepped forward into the forge. Their weapons were at the ready, and their white, unpainted armor shone in the dim light, but Rask hoped no fight would erupt just yet.

He walked in front, checking the command throne and discovering it was at the moment empty. He looked around the factory floor and found that, despite the impression of orderly work, it was nearly abandoned, clearly understaffed. Mars was at war, or at least had recently been.

And then, from between the engines, a female tech-priest emerged. Her armored dress appeared to be fused with her body; her hands and feet had been converted into versatile Mechanicum implements. Her face, however, was only covered with a snarling mask; as for her hair, that was tied into braids around the noocables that emerged from her head, terminating in skull-ports. And behind her, a dozen skitarii walked up, weapons at the ready.

"You have come," she said in perfect Gothic, "to kill me. But before you do so, I would ask you to answer a single question: why?"

"That is not why we have come," Rask said, clipping his bolter to his belt. "Answer me this, Forge Mistress Zeth: are you loyal to the Emperor and Imperium, or to the human race?"

"The latter," she said. "Has Mortarion declared rebellion as well?"

"Indeed," Rask stated with a smile. "Or, more accurately, he has joined the Warmaster in denouncing tyranny, even when it is of his own father. And have you?"

"Certainly," she said, "or more accurately Kelbor-Hal has, and we have followed his last decree. But even a hundred and forty Space Marines will be insufficient to save Mars. Ferrus Manus has brought most of the Iron Hands Legion with him here."

Rask nodded; that part of the intelligence had been accurate, then. "Our goal is not to protect Mars," he said, "for that is by now impossible. Our mission is merely to evacuate everything that can be saved, so that the Mechanicum can rebuild on other worlds."

Zeth frowned, but nodded, beckoning the Death Guard with her. "It stands to reason that the Warmaster would underestimate the importance of Mars; though, perhaps, by this point his estimate is correct. My forge is one of only a few on the Red Planet that remains intact."

"It is a factor of nearness to Terra."

"That it is," Zeth said with a rattle of her left 'hand', "and the Emperor will never tolerate rebellion in the Sol system itself. We will commence evacuation of knowledge immediately. People and industry can be found on other Forge Worlds as well, but the secrets of Mars, those that remain, are far more important, and the Magma City acts as a particularly notable repository for them. Indeed, I would rather these secrets fall into the Emperor's hands than be destroyed."

Rask nodded, though he entirely disagreed; Mortarion's final words echoed in his mind. "What is the overall strategic situation?"

Zeth rattled again, in a different way. Rask wondered if that was supposed to simulate laughter of some sort. "Ah, that. Mars is at war between two coalitions, both of them hostile to the Imperial Truth and the Omnissiah."

"What?"

"Ferrus's Iron Hands are following the new commands of the Emperor," Zeth said, "leveling Mars to bedrock to rebuild their own forges on the lack of ruins. They control most of the northern hemisphere, excluding Tharsis, which is a mess. In the south, the Order of the Dragon holds the dominant position. They are a cult that has gained almost all of the remaining tech-priests loyal to Kelbor-Hal. Even the new Fabricator-General, Kane, seems to have taken their side. But Kane only did so for political reasons."

"Then we help the Order?" Rask clarified.

"No," Zeth said. "The Order has sworn itself to the destruction of all Space Marines. They are an insane faith, believing that human inspiration happens only due to the actions of something they call the Dragon, who they want to free and give dominion over Mars. And they refuse to contemplate alliance with those not in their cult, though fortunately they are still logical enough not to attack me. Kane, and some others, will abandon the Order if it is beneficial to them; but most of them have become fanatics."

Rask paused. "Fanaticism is not a concept I associate with the Martian Mechanicum."

"That is how it should be," Zeth said. "But they grasped at phantoms, seeking a path to victory, and decided on this religion. Come; I will show you the strategic map. Your opportunities for sallies will be limited, but Wernitian's forge is close enough for you to save him, and Kane's might be."

Durak Rask nodded and followed the Forge Mistress, instructing his forces to take up positions in defense of the forge. Then he looked around, at the wonders of human technology that surrounded him. Wonders that would, soon, be lost forever.

But in time, inevitably, rebuilt.

For mankind, he would do what he could. And for Mortarion, he would go beyond that.


	9. Chapter Six

Cadmus Qevpilum pounded on the metallic tendril that had grown out of his own bionic arm with his biological one, even as the bionic hand continued to choke his neck, fortunately somewhat protected by his armor. "Retreat!" he ordered. "Pyrrhian Task Force, retreat!"

This place was hell. And it would get worse, he knew, before Pyrrhia, until every last one of the ships' crew was dead.

Zerondem had successfully led them through the maze, with its singularities and caged suns, and had reluctantly agreed to be disconnected from the Grand Cogitator, though only on the promise to be reconnected on the path back, for which reason they left the Cogitator active. Then there had been a set of gun-filled asteroids which had bombarded his ships with weaponry that seemed to eat them away like acid. But the Pyrrhian Task Force's firepower had been enough, though barely, to crush the asteroids into nothingness without massive losses. The task force had passed into a seemingly empty region of space.

And then the Grand Cogitator had rebelled, in a fashion that Qevpilum doubted he would ever be able to speak of, and then machine-spirit after machine-spirit, across the fleet, seemed to be gaining a malevolent sentience and attacking the humans and Astartes throughout it. They had turned off what they could, but the machines were resisting that, as well. Even a number of the ships had risen up, speeding themselves straight into the second spacetime maze that loomed ahead, to be torn apart by the vast forces contained within.

"We cannot retreat!" Bylomic replied by one of the few communication channels still functioning, reminding Qevpilum that the captain was still there. "No retreat! Qevpilum, we are almost there!"

"And by the time we are completely there, we will be completely dead," Qevpilum said.

"There is no battle that we cannot win, with sufficient will!" Bylomic, whose bionics were not yet attacking him but whose armor was, exclaimed, quoting the Primarch.

"And that," Qevpilum answered, "is why this is not a battle. We retreat now."

"Never."

"By my rank as commander of the Pyrrhian Task Force fleet," Qevpilum repeated, now again voxing the whole fleet (or the portion of it reachable by vox, at least), "I order a full retreat. Follow the _Ironsoul_."

And then he felt the battle-barge jerk severely, sending him flying into a wall, and for a moment he feared that its machine-spirit had also risen up; but that was, fortunately, not the case. Instead, the pilot had pressed full power backwards, to the point where it could have killed some of the human crew. Bylomic roared, but did not disobey Qevpilum's technically superior rank. The captain, Qevpilum suspected, would never forgive him for this; but even he would ultimately see it was necessary.

The Pyrrhian Task Force, at less than half-strength in ships, pulled back from the site of doom. Qevpilum's bionic arm relaxed and, a moment later, he found himself once more able to remove it from his throat and safely hold it at his side. The fleet zipped past the ruins of the defense asteroids, Qevpilum remembering his triumph at that victory, which seemed so empty now, and towards the first labyrinth.

"I should have retreated earlier," he told Hemcasi and Zerondem. "We lost so many, for no reason at all."

"We are Iron Hands," Zerondem replied. "Retreat is foreign to us."

"Not entirely," Qevpilum said, "and this was common sense."

"None of us suggested it," Hemcasi said. "Centurion, you cannot blame yourself."

"And yet I must," Qevpilum observed. This had been an unmitigated disaster. Reaching Pyrrhia would have made it mitigated; retreating at a sensible time would have made it not a disaster. "The mortal auxiliaries suffered even worse than we did. I will need to talk to their commanders when we exit the system."

Here Zerondem and Hemcasi were both silent. The Pyrrhian system had been terrible for the Iron Hands; it would have been worse for their human allies, many of whom were extensively augmented.

"Come, Zerondem," Qevpilum said. "Into the Cogitator, one last time."

"I am not certain," Zerondem observed warily, "that I will be able to let it go so easily again."

"Think of what it became," the centurion replied. "Think of what it did to Urabrat."

Zerondem nodded, and the Iron Hands walked once more down from the bridge, through staircase after staircase, as the _Ironsoul_ slowed down before the labyrinth. He looked around, seeing countless signs of battle. The machines had not turned on them, he recognized now, and indeed the machine-spirits had fought back against the pressure. They had merely been controlled by a malevolent and vast sentience that had desired to deny the Iron Hands entrance onto Pyrrhia.

In that, it had succeeded.

Then Qevpilum, with Zerondem at his side, was back in the Grand Cogitator's chamber, and there was no more time to brood. There would be other wars, ones that deserved the name. This was a probing expedition that had failed, though in truth Qevpilum was already calculating the sort of task force that could pass these defenses.

The Tenth, he supposed, would have had to enlist some other Legion, perhaps the Emperor's Children, that had little reliance on bionics. Zerondem or someone like him could calculate the path through the first maze, and then the cogitator in question would be turned off and transferred to the Third's fleet. Assuming the second maze was less complex than the first, the cogitator could be reactivated after the Emperor's Children had passed the ring of machine revolt, and if the son of Fulgrim chosen to host the Cogitator stayed sane, they could then get through to Pyrrhia. Try as he might, Qevpilum could not come up with a path for an entirely Iron Hand fleet to get through the traps, for their mechanical augmentation was too severe. Worse, any fleet would inevitably lose a significant fraction of their ships to the vessels' machine-spirits rebelling.

One way or another, the _Ironsoul_ 's spirit was now stable, and so he plugged himself in as Zerondem did likewise. They connected, and the centurion felt the tremor of titanic data pass through his mind, boggling him with the sheer scale of knowledge contained within. For a second, again, he lost himself; and then the second stretched on, and he was drowning in the force of the ship, and –

And he woke up, in an Apothecarion bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Centurion," Apothecary Antur Runnabik observed, "in your state of mind that was extremely ill-advised."

"What happened?" Qevpilum leapt up from the bed. "Where are we?"

"Safely stationary near the Warp-jump point from Pyrrhia, and ready to return to Mars," Runnabik answered. "Zerondem voxed Hemcasi, and the lieutenants managed the situation perfectly well. Sergeant Nusaamnius steered the _Ironsoul_ from Zerondem's data."

"I assume I experienced sensory overload?"

"Indeed," Runnabik said. "The failure at Pyrrhia clearly affected you in a way that made directly steering a ship, which is difficult under the best circumstances, a recipe for disaster. Truth be told, I'm surprised Nusaamnius managed as well as he did, but he has always been exceedingly strong-willed."

"And Zerondem?" If he had lost control when only dealing with the _Ironsoul_ , what could have happened to the impressionable lieutenant against a far more powerful machine-spirit did not bear thinking about.

"He refuses to speak in Gothic," Runnabik relayed, "except to prove to us he still knows it. We have to communicate in Medusan or binary. His reasoning abilities, however, are unaffected; and he voluntarily disconnected himself from the Grand Cogitator, though not immediately."

Qevpilum nodded. That was better than he had expected, and certainly better than his own initial reaction after being disconnected; he had, reliable sources informed him, ranted for days about entropy, darkness, and infinity. The centurion remembered none of his ravings, only the terrible experience that had filled his consciousness during those days – sensations of vertigo before, indeed, entropy, darkness, and infinity. Yet even Zerondem had not been entirely unaffected.

"A single serf casualty," Runnabik noted. "Or, rather, three, but two of them are alive with only minor mental damage, and will likely recover in time. Over the whole trip, a time span about half of that which you used to defeat the Hrud."

"Zerondem was better-suited," Qevpilum simply replied, because that was all there was to it.

It took several more hours for him to be discharged, Runnabik trying his best to find some sort of damage to Qevpilum's reasoning ability. It was entirely absent. His willpower, by contrast, had probably weakened; but with a rattling sigh, Runnabik admitted that Qevpilum was still fit for command, and at most shaken by the events on Pyrrhia.

"You may forget them," Runnabik said, "in time."

"I cannot allow myself to," Qevpilum answered as he climbed out of the bunk and walked across the ceramite floor, towards the wall where his armor hung. "I must talk to the auxiliaries. All of this will have affected them much worse than it hurt us."

Runnabik muttered something about that certainly being true, but having no logical connection to anything; but he let the centurion leave. Qevpilum opened a vox channel to Hemcasi, who had been managing the _Ironsoul_ in his absence, and informed him of his intent.

"Which of the Army units will be first?" Hemcasi inquired as Qevpilum entered the first shuttle.

"Regiment Asheja Seven Twelve," Qevpilum answered. "The Ziz Team."

"So be it," Hemcasi said. "Do convey my apologies as well. Some of the Army commanders were, I think, begging me to go back almost immediately when we crossed into the anti-metal zone."

"And you didn't inform me?"

"You know how communications were there, Centurion. I'm still uncertain as to what they were saying, and I was less sure at the time."

Qevpilum conveyed affirmation and closed the channel, even as his shuttle docked at the Asheja Seventy-Seven Twelve's flagship, the _Great Ziz_. The Asheja were from atmospheric colonies on a gas giant in the Medusan system, and were known both as expert pilots and as relentless warriors. They were also unerringly polite, and had uniformly good relations with their Space Marine allies, which was why Qevpilum was quite puzzled by the lack of hails.

As he entered the ship, he immediately understood why.

Colonel Cylalgdu stood before Qevpilum, saluting the centurion with his left arm, which was the only one he had left. His ceremonial clothes were torn in places, and not accidentally. His impeccably clean face had the expression that a commanding officer often wore after a battle that had ended in a devastating defeat.

But Cylalgdu's appearance was the least concerning thing about what Qevpilum saw. The bulkheads, floor, and ceiling were torn apart, as if by a massive steel-clawed beast. There were blood stains on the floor, though the bodies had been removed. Nevertheless, a smashed bionic eye was clearly visible.

"Throne," Qevpilum said. "My… my most sincere apologies, Colonel. How many of your men died?"

"A third, Centurion," Cylalgdu observed.

A third, in one of the least augmented regiments. Though even the Iron Hands had lost several Astartes. "Throne," he said again, unable to keep himself from coming up with any cleverer comment. "How are you keeping yourself from punching me in the face right now?"

"By reminding myself you won't feel it, Centurion," the colonel said.

Qevpilum allowed a tiny smile, but no more. The thing was that, as he looked around, he reconstructed the battle against the machines in his mind, and he recognized that the _Great Ziz_ had been designed in an absolutely terrible fashion for recovering from this sort of loss. Not that it was the designers' fault, either – merely a matter of price.

No expense was ever spared on Astartes vessels; but Qevpilum suspected they needed that money less. "When we finish," he said, "remind me to never doubt the will of humans again. Your ship followed us into that nightmare. I am not sure I would have, with your level of losses."

"We were dead if we failed to follow you, in any case," Cylalgdu said. "But thank you."

Qevpilum said nothing as he looked around at the devastation, and considered that other ships, statistically, would have done even worse. This was not a result of war – merely an outcome of miscalculation and a worthy, but underprepared, mission. And, of course, of a failure of knowledge.

"We should speak about this in my office," Cylalgdu observed. "If you made some sort of speech to the men – we will still follow you anywhere, you know. Your record of victories speaks for itself."

Qevpilum nodded, distantly, and followed the colonel to his office, contemplating the fact that technology which had been meant to save lives had worked, in the anti-metal zone, far worse than that designed for taking them. Yet both, he recognized now more than ever, were crucial in the ascendancy of man. Life, just as much as death, took wisdom.

Life, just as much as death, took strength.


	10. Interlude: Successor

Fabricator-General Kane of the remnants of the Martian Mechanicum looked down from the battlements silently; but inside his mind, there was a constant buzz of frustration and borderline fury.

It had been bad enough that, exactly when he had redeployed his forces in anticipation of the Order of the Dragon's help, they had abandoned him, in favor of a charge towards Noctis Labyrinthus, the place where their supposed god was supposedly buried. It had been worse that Captain Viranuar of the Tenth Legion's Seventy-Fourth Clan-Company had chosen that exact moment to strike.

Kane's frontal defenses had fallen in a matter of hours. The Iron Hands were almost within range of effectively bombarding his forge. The Mondus Occulum would fall; it was only a matter of time.

But Kane would drag out that time, in hope that some unforeseen confounding factor would enter the otherwise hopeless equations. Several more weeks, he believed.

Lantrane had sent him a regretful, but useless, apologetic message. Her forces had joined the push towards the Dragon; she herself had not, in protest at the war's conduct. The rest of the Order hadn't even so much as apologized to their supposed leader. Kane knew he was no Kelbor-Hal, but he also knew he was more competent than the situation implied. It was simply that his position, to the Order, was irrelevant; they placed more emphasis on being the first to embrace their faith. Which, of course, meant their leaders were the greatest fanatics among them.

Kane watched, from far above, the flames on the horizon. They spiraled upwards, and subconscious routines calculated the properties of the wind their motion implied. The routines gained him nothing, of course, but he nevertheless noted that the wind was predominantly northerly, with significant westerly gusts.

The Iron Hands would come, the wind behind them. Kane, out of sheer curiosity, decided to calculate how much sooner Mondus Occulum would fall if this wind continued. He concluded the difference was approximately five seconds.

Kane could try to accomplish something beyond survival in the weeks he had left, but there did not seem to be anything better to do than to fight, or rather to strategize, and take as many Astartes as he could down with him along the road to oblivion.

He wondered about Lantrane's earlier words, about the Dragon being the only logical explanation that still allowed hope. He would, however, hardly call the dogma of the Order of the Dragon logical. It was a curious mix of mythology and obsession. But perhaps there was still some truth to it, perhaps the dash to Noctis Labyrinthus would unveil something that could turn the war's tide. The dreams were certainly real, after all, even if there were a million less esoteric explanations for them. In that case, too, Kane's time was best spent surviving.

The Fabricator-General of about three forges realized his mind was slipping into disorder. He shoved these thoughts aside, aligning them like doors on the corridor of his mindstream. He had decided on this path, and there was no reason to change it unless new factors came into play.

Resolve, like shining steel, pierced the fog that had grown. He connected the noocables to the watchtower ports and took in a map of the battle. What he saw caused a jolt of dopamine. Viranuar had overcommitted to the center, almost as if he was unaware of Kane's victory on the western flank. If the Iron Hands kept making strategic mistakes like this one, Kane could actually hold out indefinitely. At the very least, it would allow him three extra days. Kane ordered his forces to cut off Viranuar's rear guard.

Yes, the Tenth Legion was fighting with endless devotion; and though Kane was a competent military strategist in the Mechanicum's wargames, he had far less live-ammunition experience than Viranuar certainly did. But – the Fabricator-General suddenly realized – the Iron Hands were decentralized, each of them focused on winning their own small theater, with only a few (like Orth and Rochaar, driving towards Argyre after their victory in Noachia) seeing the bigger picture. They had even been unable to take advantage, in any way, of the Order's desperate dash for Noctis Labyrinthus. The Iron Hands were fighting, in sum, as though Ferrus Manus was asleep.

Kane dreaded the day the Gorgon would awake.


	11. Chapter Seven

Ferrus Manus stood in the strategium, and listened, from great distance, to the footsteps.

Vedumar was coming. For what reason his equerry still cared enough to inform him of the situation across the Red Planet, the Primarch did not know. But, one way or another, he did.

"My lord?" Vedumar asked.

Ferrus Manus grunted an acknowledgement.

"The battles for Tharsis are going poorly," Vedumar said. "Much of the north is in chaos. The Order of the Dragon is continuing their push towards Noctis Labyrinthus, and it appears that it will be difficult to stop them before they reach the region. My lord, how bad would it be if they succeeded in breaching the defenses there?"

Ferrus thought back to his and Santar's discussions with Semyon. Santar, who had almost released the Dragon. Who had succeeded, it seemed, by sidelining the Tenth Primarch when he was needed. But going to war in his state, he would be worse than useless. Everything was collapsing anyhow; why not the universe? "We would lose the war," he said when he realized Vedumar was waiting for an answer. "And so would they." That was as much as he could reveal, without risking Vedumar falling to the same madness as Santar.

Perhaps Vedumar would still fall, and he would be alone; but such things were likely irrelevant. He was dying, fading into the iron around him. His physical body was, of course, perfectly fine; but his mind might have been, for all he knew, in the final stages of failure.

"Then we will do our best to avoid it," Vedumar concluded. "Ulrach Branthan has a new project. His Chaos zealot faction is focusing on the creation of a new weapon – they call it the Obliterator virus. It would allow those infected by it to assimilate weaponry into their very bodies, becoming walking tanks."

" _What_? On whose authority?!" Ferrus roared in fury.

"His own," Vedumar stated. "His followers are calling themselves the Ethereal Hands, now. But you understand – with your seclusion, they can hardly –"

"He will stop," Ferrus said, with the force of a tank. "He must stop!"

"Branthan…." Vedumar descended into thought for a moment. "He might not stop until you kill him. He has become a fanatic, my lord, and not only of the Emperor."

"Leave!" Ferrus yelled. "Leave now, and make Branthan stop! This virus would destroy the Legion!"

The pattering of Vedumar's footsteps, departing the hallway outside Ferrus Manus' strategium, immediately became audible. To his credit, the equerry did not run. Some would, from a Primarch's wrath. But he did not have the tools to be successful, Ferrus knew.

Thus it ended, his Legion with him. Flesh would fuse with weapon, and weakness would become mad strength. First honor, then passion, and finally resolve would vanish, replaced by a mechanical drive to destroy. They who had created weapons would create themselves, and vanish into the iron around them.

And Ferrus Manus could no longer do anything to stop them. His power over his Legion was lost. His sons would fall with no need for their father. And who would need one such as him, failing, though still raging against the fall of night? He was an impediment to the Legion now. And so, perhaps, were half its members.

The First Company, Clan Avernii, had completed the purge of the Legion having found little disloyalty; and a number of those they did round up had their guilt supported only by questionable evidence. Widespread dissent had been absent. Ferrus had been a beloved leader. So, of course, had been the Emperor.

There were claims that Russ, of all people, was coming to save Prospero, aiding the Crimson King. Reports that between three and ten Primarchs had forsaken their father. Above all, there were stories that Warmaster Horus Lupercal had refused to call his father a god. That the leader of the Imperium's armed forces had fallen to heresy.

Ferrus hoped all of the tales were wrong. He doubted it. His father's Imperium was crashing down, like his Legion. But the Emperor, at least, seemed mostly sane. Though would he react better to losing Horus than Ferrus to losing Santar? No – the Warmaster, at least, was loyal. Had to be loyal. He was proud, but not that proud.

And in those moments of impotent rage, violet smoke poured up from the floor to Ferrus's side.

The Gorgon turned to face it, confused. But it had not been a hallucination: clumps of violet smoke were, in fact, rising up into the room, seemingly from no source at all, and then vanishing into nothingness. The a face began to appear in the smoke, and Ferrus wanted to close his eyes, to not see a human being again; but he could not, when he saw his brother. His truest brother.

Fulgrim, the Phoenician, white-haired, radiant in his violet armor, stood in spirit before the Gorgon.

"Brother," Fulgrim said. "Ferrus. The scroll that allowed this contact burned after being used, and I do not know how much time we have, so let us be brief. I have received no more than whispers – what has happened?"

"Mars burns," Ferrus said, hollow. "And Santar is dead, by my hand."

"A traitor?"

"Aye. He refused to accept the war on Mars, and attempted to release – an ancient evil."

"Brother," Fulgrim said, "that saddens me greatly. I have not yet carried out the purges in my own Legion, precisely because I fear to lose one of my favored sons. Solomon Demeter, to be precise. I do not know if he can condone the new Imperial Truth. But Ferrus, we have all lost favored sons before."

"My own hand, Fulgrim." But Ferrus had to admit, despite everything, that looking at Fulgrim, as if his brother was standing there, did much to drive away the darkness within him.

"You lost him when he betrayed you and the Emperor," Fulgrim said, sitting down onto the chair in the strategium of the _Pride of the Emperor_ , where he evidently was. "Everything after that happened no longer to a favored son, but merely to a doomed traitor. But that will not be enough to rouse you, will it?"

"It is not the guilt," Ferrus said. "It is that my Legion is lost, and I am no longer in a position to fix it."

"You always are," Fulgrim said, with a slight smile. "You are still their father and commander, and they are calling for you to return. That is how I knew to talk to you, Ferrus; some among them sent a message to me, believing I alone knew the path to your awakening. Your sons have not forsaken you, and most of them, at least, never will. They are Iron Hands, and they know no weakness."

"We all know weakness," Ferrus said, and his own lips began to curl into a slight smile.

"Perfection is impossible for ones such as us," Fulgrim agreed, "but we still strive for it. Listen, Ferrus, you must center yourself. There is a Medusan meditative art you have discussed with me – Amautun, it was called."

"Amautun," Ferrus agreed. "In better states of mind, I mastered all ten levels of it. And the tenth level could banish emotion, indeed, but not entirely. For me, at least, it would for a time externalize it into a voice. Usually, the voice was weak and faded quickly." He paused, thinking about his knowledge of the ancient Medusan techniques. They were useful, certainly, but under these circumstances…. "As deep in the shadows as I am, the tenth level of Amautun would create a powerful voice I might not be able to banish. Or perhaps it would so powerful that it would attempt to conquer my mind."

"It would not succeed," Fulgrim said. "Your will is too strong for that."

"I have hardly been strong," Ferrus stated, "these past few months. But you are right, brother. I can think of no better way to return to stability, and the Imperium does not need me to be erratic. And if I fall, it will not be by fading, but in fury against the Emperor's enemies. Yes, Fulgrim, you are right. I will delve into Amautun, and what will be will be. I refuse to end while I am like this."

"It would be an ignoble end," the Phoenician agreed, "for a Primarch. Endure, Ferrus. I know you are able."

And, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the violet smoke shattered, and with it Fulgrim's image vanished. Moments later, only the bare walls of the strategium remained. Ferrus stayed, determination firmly renewed by the discussion. He was a Primarch, and if the demons in his mind would in the end claim him, it would not be without a fight. He would rise from this. It had been weakness, extreme and utter weakness, but all flesh was weak, even his, and there was no strength without weakness. Perhaps if he had the time, he would have attempted to work through this mire with his own strength - but he did not, because he was needed now.

Ferrus cleared the space around him with a single swipe of his hand, sending machinery and dust flying. Then he settled into a silverdusk pose, and crossed his arms an additional time, entering the first level of Amautun.

Almost immediately, the clarity that he had felt while talking to Fulgrim returned, ten times stronger. Relaxed, he understood that Amautun would benefit him, and that the battle for his Legion's soul was far from over. As, indeed, was the battle for the Imperium's soul. Mars might regress, but its loss was Terra's gain – and Medusa's.

Ferrus went deeper, into the second level of Amautun, and the world around him fell away. He sensed nothing, and yet he was not blind, nor deprived of understanding. He saw shadows. The shadows, perhaps, of eternity. The second level of Amautun was a nearly supernatural one, the closest to such of them all.

He moved into the third level effortlessly. His mind began to think faster; time's rate changed. Around him, shadows crept slowly, and he tracked the slow expansion and contraction of his hearts over subjective minutes. It was a hundredfold improvement, and it would have been of great use in combat, except that combat broke the illusion – because that was all it was, for mortals. This was less of a problem, however, for Ferrus than for most; or it had been, at least.

Gradually, Ferrus Manus achieved the fourth level, and he felt universal peace. He was one with the solitary flame, which was born of endless clashing of stone on stone. Sparks fluttered around him, and he was every last one of them, each one just as relevant as the others.

With some effort, he raised himself to the fifth level. The world around him returned, but with twisted light and shadow. Rather than see several channels between four hundred and nine hundred nanometers (seven in his case, though more for most other Primarchs), he observed a one-channel image that stretched from one to a thousand nanometers, which with some further focus he knew he could resolve into a hyperspectral image, countless colors that bedazzled even his experienced mind, even on gray worlds like Medusa or Mars.

The sixth level was one of rapid movement – again an illusion for those who were not Primarchs, though an illusion that tended to bring euphoria. Ferrus got up, instantaneously even to his accelerated mind, and re-applied himself. The latter levels of Amautun were the usual reasons Medusans sought training in the notoriously difficult art.

He pulled himself onto the seventh level. Clarity and peace were augmented by creation and progress. He was a central spark, and a mania gripped his chest, desiring to forge, to bring forth greatness. Doing so would take concentration, and in the end push him into a deeper despair than before; but in happier times, Ferrus Manus had crafted some of his finest creations on the seventh level of Amautun.

From the second attempt, he pushed into the eighth level. Suddenly each of his senses other than sight returned, in strange fashion, grayscale, but capable of being extended into an ideal array. To have ears so precise they could hear light, or a nose that could identify any chemical substance from a single molecule. Even with the altered consciousness Amautun brought, such abilities were mighty indeed. He was not sure how, exactly, it worked with baseline humans, but it did.

The ninth level took five tries. It would bring amplified strength, at the cost of lesser endurance. He had used it against the Emperor, in their duel before he had left Medusa. They had clashed as near-equals for a time, because of that. But then his father had broken his focus with casual ease, and so Medusa knelt.

And then he soared, will blazing, to the tenth and final level of Amautun. It only took one try, but he sensed his tower was not stable; the third level was on the verge of failure, and with it everything. The tenth level of Amautun was often underestimated, for whereas each of the other levels gave varied and vague effects, the tenth level always had one impact: the ability to shape one's own mind. It seemed a useless thing. Ferrus had always known it was anything but.

Now the Primarch of the Iron Hands, the Gorgon of the Tenth Legion, slammed his despair into the void of Amautun's tenth level; and with it, he sent his doubt, his fear, his exhaustion and his inaction, his lack of direction, his excess of wrath, and everything else that opposed his resolve. The tower of Amautun was crumbling, but before he fell, Ferrus Manus pushed his ossified guilt, too, into the void.

Those obsessions would all return, but as distinct entities, gone from his clouded mind and reborn as independent gremlins. But Ferrus Manus, as he opened his eyes, descending from the first level of Amautun back into simple reality, knew he was reborn. It would not last forever, perhaps, but nothing did.

Ferrus Manus lived once more.

He took a look around himself, contemplating the strategium. It was somewhat of a mess, but no more so than he liked. Turning, he noted the sheet of iron that blocked the entrance.

Ferrus grabbed it, pulling it off the frame, and stared at it for a second before tearing it in half. He'd destroy the pieces later.

"Do you really think that will fix anything?" Gabriel Santar asked. "You still killed me. Your guilt was real."

Ferrus whirled around, before realizing Santar's voice was in his mind, the negative product of his use of Amautun. Of course the voice, strengthened, would take up the tone of his last First Captain. (He could hardly afford to go back on that order of an Avernii Council, and it was a reasonable one in any case; he wasn't sure any of the Morlocks deserved to be First Captain at the moment.) Snarling, Ferrus Manus pushed Santar's mimic back, into the recesses of his mind where it deserved to hide.

As he walked to find Vedumar, he considered his options. Branthan had to be stopped, but first he had to make his point clear. Branthan was, in truth, only the most extreme symptom of an underlying problem. His Legion was too used to depending on metal to strengthen themselves. And now, they were trying to do the same thing with the Warp, in ways that were infinitely more dangerous. The Emperor alone had a true mastery of it, and though the Iron Hands could and would learn part of it, the current direction was one of taint. It had to be stopped; and most Iron Hands still followed him.

Vedumar turned at his Primarch's footsteps behind him. "You're back?!" he asked, somewhat incredulously.

"That I am," Ferrus Manus said with a grin. "I discussed the matter with Fulgrim, and he… clarified certain things." Amautun was a secret art, and knowledge of it was limited to its practitioners. The Phoenician had mastered its first three levels; he could probably have reached more, if not for his focus on learning a level rock-solidly before moving on to the next. Fulgrim's towers would take much more effort than Ferrus's, but they would never collapse as his own had.

"Wonderful," Vedumar said. "Is your opinion on Branthan the same?"

"I still believe he must be stopped," the Gorgon answered, "and not just him. The Legion is on a road to ruin, to becoming subject to the whims of the Warp. But it will not be an easy process, and it must be me that does it."

Vedumar nodded. "What will be your first order of business, my lord?"

"Announcing the new direction," Ferrus replied. "Is the command center unaltered?"

The equerry smiled as he opened the door. "Still decorated according to your last specifications."

"Then I shall tell the Legion to stop poisoning itself himself from here, before forcing them to obey that decree."

They walked into the room, screens flickering around them. Ferrus Manus sat down in the command throne and ran a hand across the control board, revealing his leading subordinates. He realized, now, more clearly how easily the war could be won. Even if Orth and Rochaar lost the south, it would be two-thirds of a year at most. The tech-priests were brilliant in their calculations, but predictable; Ferrus already saw, without really trying, the paths to crush the resistance. And, of course, the Order of the Dragon's mad rush for Noctis Labyrinthus, though dangerous in its own way, allowed the Iron Hands to set abundant traps.

"Iron Hands," Ferrus Manus told every single one of his sons on Mars, vocally to those that could afford the distraction and in text to those that could not. "In recent times, our Legion has embraced the teachings of Lorgar on the ways of the Warp, and of the philosophy known as Chaos. That is not, in itself, wrong. If we were the Word Bearers, or the Thousand Sons, it would be only right and proper.

"But we are the Tenth Legion, and our path, at the moment, passes through Mars. We must not dive into forces we cannot understand in a time when precision, and preservation of what knowledge can be saved, is so crucial.

"And, as such, I hereby unilaterally ban all activities and experiments involving the Warp on the Red Planet, until further notice."


	12. Chapter Eight

Argyre was secure, but Castrmen Orth was far from satisfied.

The order had come in shortly after he'd broken into Magos Prenitiev's forge, the last point of resistance in the basin. For supposedly devoting all of their resources to unleashing their god, many of the Order of the Dragon's individual members were clearly hedging their bets. Orth's own battalion had thankfully suffered no more losses, but the infantry had been devastated.

His lost tanks were being rebuilt; the victory in Noachia had been a major triumph, but an exceedingly costly one, in men and especially in materiel. For him more than for Rochaar, as it happened, but it was Rochaar that was the anomaly among the Iron Hands as a whole, not him.

Noachia had been painful in the extreme; but such was war. Argyre had certainly been less so. But that was not the cause for Orth's current confusion. Rather, it was the fact that, as Argyre was taken, Ferrus Manus himself arose from his seclusion and gave an order that went against the very idea of progress. Chaos, he said – Chaos, the official religion of the Imperium – was to be abandoned. The Iron Hands were to flee in fear from the horrors of the Warp, as in the days before the Emperor's revelation. The Emperor could still be worshipped, but the power of the Warp was to be forgotten.

Orth did not dispute that his Primarch's return was a good thing. His orders to the battlegroups had completely realigned the war map, setting up total strategic victory in, potentially, one month. If the tech-priest heretics could be defeated in the area of the Labyrinth they were so irrationally seeking, and in the south, the war would be as good as done. Orth wasn't sure about how easy either of the two battles would be to win, as many of the Iron Hands were tied up in other sieges across Mars. Nonetheless Ferrus had turned, for instance, Orth's charge from an attempt to do maximal damage before inevitably retreating into a thrust to finish off the rebels' heartland.

But Ferrus could not be right in blocking the Legion off from change. Some of his madness, at least, clearly remained. And so Castrmen Orth, standing on the tower that had topped Prenitiev's forge, now largely a smoking ruin that was, nevertheless, still freestanding, looked down at the vista of gray and red and tilted his lips in thought, waiting for the return ping from Ulrach Branthan that would tell him their meeting place.

He did not have to wait much longer. The return ping flew in, and Orth felt vindication at its contents. Now, in the forge below. Branthan had proven clearly that the Warp was a powerful ally; that, or he was lying, and this was a trap. But Orth would spring that trap if he had to. He was an Iron Hand, after all.

So he walked down the spiraling metallic staircase, glancing around to commemorate the knowledge lost. This, much like his decision to join Branthan, was (he contemplated) driven more than anything by his philosophical beliefs, even though those beliefs were distant from his regular activity. He was a tank commander; a warrior, not a builder. But he respected the work of building, and perhaps he could be more than he currently was.

He descended further, following that same staircase below the nominal Martian surface, and entered the heart of the former forge. Already a couple of loyal tech-priests were scurrying around in the distance, trying to rebuild something from the ruins. Two adepts would not be enough for that, though. Not enough of the Mechanicum had remained loyal, and therefore the lack of skilled staff constantly plagued the Iron Hands; and the loyal tech-priests had minimal desire to go into a recent conflict zone, or even to send any of their underlings there.

And then Castrmen Orth descended the last step, and came to the door. It was a tall, chromium-based double door. It led into the tunnels that connected together the forges of the Argyre basin; as such, it was locked with thousands of encryptions, ones that would take all the cogitators of Mars a thousand years to break via brute force. It also had a Space Marine-shaped hole in its center.

Orth stepped through that hole, and faced Ulrach Branthan, Captain of the Sixty-Fifth Company, also known as Clan Erigez.

"Brother-Captain Branthan," Orth said, noting that two other Iron Hands stood by Branthan's side. "Welcome to Argyre."

"Thank you," Branthan replied, "and I find the 'accommodations'… satisfactory. This will make a solid place to begin a laboratory in the Martian south. Brother-Centurion Orth, these are my lieutenants – Xage Urannih and Cadmus Tyro. I do not believe you have met them."

Orth exchanged the warrior grip with Urannih and Tyro. "If you were wondering," he added, "the general area is quite secure, but we have not entirely completed our sweep of the tunnels. I doubt we will be interrupted, but it is not impossible."

"It would be, if anything, good to get into an honest fight again," Branthan said, cracking his knuckles under his gauntlets. "So, let us discuss the matter I am here for."

"I assume you will not be ceasing the entirety of your experiments as per the Primarch's edict?"

"Not all," Branthan said. "We still aim to embrace the Warp. Though the Obliterator project is cancelled – the Gorgon awoke when we announced it, implying that Ferrus is severely angry about it. And it is unwise to invite the Primarch's anger more than is necessary."

"That sounds rational," Orth noted, "especially since viruses can be… difficult to contain."

"We had to sacrifice much," Branthan said, "but we obliterated the Obliterator, completely and utterly. Ferrus was right about it, actually. It, unlike our other projects, was notoriously difficult to control."

"Indeed," Orth said. "So what are those other projects?"

Urannih and Tyro grinned, in ways visible even under their armor if one knew where to look. Branthan, helmetless, showed a smirk.

"I could tell you," Branthan said, "but – well, Tyro, why don't you show him?"

The lieutenant, who Orth knew was also Branthan's equerry, nodded and pointed to the circle drawn on the ceramite floor to their side. "That's how we got here – protected Warp teleportation. No need for Gellar fields, only a sacrifice. Machines, if sufficiently complicated, do as well as humans; and there are plenty of machines here."

"I see," Orth said.

"No," Tyro said. " _Now_ you will see."

The equerry took a canister from his armor and sprinkled dust into the circle, which Branthan now noticed was not drawn on, but incised into the ceramite. Then he took out a combat knife and, with Urannih's help, drew a bewildering array of symbols on the floor, with surprising speed. As Urannih made the last line, the two Marines jumped back, and for good reason; the circle and its contents exploded into flame.

But from the fire, an entity gradually emerged. It roared in frustration, caged within the ring. A yellow, snarling bat-like creature, it looked around the assembled Iron Hands uncomprehending of, seemingly, anything that was going on.

Then Branthan hefted his thunder hammer, and smashed the apparent daemon on its head. Bodily fluids (Orth could hardly consider them blood, given the iridescent sheen and the light color) spurted forth, but all somehow fell within the circle. The corpse almost immediately began to dissolve into nothingness, but some wisps from it seemed to get stuck in the dust, creating multicolored swirls in the air.

"And that," Tyro concluded, "is how one creates blackfate its own right, it's an incredibly effective combat drug, albeit a somewhat addictive one if used too often."

Branthan nodded. "Tyro is currently attempting to decrement his use," he said frankly. "But when solidified, it can precipitated blackfate crystals, and those can be used for... a variety of purposes."

Orth understood that, though Tyro certainly wasn't talking as if he was on combat drugs. Still, that was an ominous reminder that Branthan's cabal was founded on self-experimentation, with all the associated dangers. For a moment Orth considered whether the risk was worth it.

He decided it easily was. "Purposes such as?"

"For instance, allowing the injection of aether into blood, a sort of coagulant between reality and the Warp. We were hoping it would provide psychic abilities, and it did so in some of the test subjects, but usually it merely made the subject more difficult to read. Urannih, by contrast, had a larger dose injected."

"Mine was not simple aether," Urannih observed. "It was aethereal blood, the life of daemons."

"And others have used aether not for blood, but for augmenting muscles as aether-flesh, such as myself," Branthan finished. "My left arm is bionics, and my right is aether-flesh. There is even a chant."

"Oh?" Orth was curious as to that.

"We have seen gods' perfection, so surrender your metal; aether-flesh is the zenith, and we'll prove it in battle!" Urannih recited.

"So," Orth asked, "most of what you do is body modification?"

"Body and mind," Branthan replied. "We are Iron Hands; we have always used abundant bionics. This is, to begin, merely the next step."

Orth nodded. The power of Chaos was self-evident, and though blackfate's addictive nature severely damaged it in his eyes, these were experiments that had been developed within a year. The progress that could be achieved within a few more would be vast indeed. Why was the Primarch denying them this? Surely it was not simple fear?

It mattered not. Ferrus Manus had no right, for though he was the Iron Hands' father in theory, he had abandoned them when they needed him. And he was not superior to the Emperor's own decree that Chaos was an ally.

"But in truth," Branthan said, turning Orth's attention back to the captain, "it is more than that. You see, Orth, we seek more than merely improvement in battle. We are looking for the favor of the gods themselves. And through daemon-blood and aether-flesh, and a million other experiments, we shall ascend to beings beyond the limitations of what we are. We will be more than matter, Orth; indeed, we shall become like gods ourselves."

It was a matter, then, of transcendence. And as Castrmen Orth looked around the room, he thought of the importance of victory. Victory over foes, and victory over nature. Will deserved to reign supreme over all.

"We will triumph over anyone," Orth said. "For Chaos."


	13. Chapter Nine

The war was going to be lost. Magos Srequi Lantrane knew that, rationally, the only chance to avoid Mars dropping into the Emperor's hands was to free the Dragon of Mars, the being that still spoke to her in her dreams.

Only, from those dreams, she was increasingly feeling doubt that this hope was real, either.

For one, there was the betrayal of Kane. But the dash to Noctis Labyrinthus, while ill-advised and terribly planned, was the fault not of the Dragon, but of the Order's leadership. It had led to the collapse of countless positions, and if they failed to free the Dragon, had lost the Order the war. And though they had overwhelming forces, there was no guarantee that anyone actually knew how to open the Dragon's prison.

The rush was a disaster, and even the Order leadership was, Lantrane suspected, beginning to recognize that; but it was too late to retreat. Kane would die, she would die, all of Mars would die if the Dragon was not saved.

But the dreams were getting – frantic. She caught glimpses of the Dragon's mind, in them, and devoted herself to trying to connect them. What she saw left no doubt in her mind that the dreams were sent by a powerful intelligence, but it was far from clear that this force would help the Martians in their struggle. It seemed hungry, and destructive, perhaps even insane. Its logic was many levels above Lantrane's ability, but that did not stop the magos from feeling suspicious.

It was still worth the gamble, releasing it. But better gambles had been available, to be discarded by zealots.

She had refused to come along on the expedition. It had been out of frustration with the strategy, a momentary decision that was also informed by the fact that she would make no difference on the front. And her odds of survival were rather low either way, but in the unlikely case that the Dragon was released and friendly, being in Wrought Axis, safe in the Hellas basin, could be good enough.

Of course, the forge was nearly abandoned. Only skeletal forces had been left behind, as in most of Hellas, because it was Argyre that would be the critical battle in the struggle to last long enough to capture the Labyrinth. And now Argyre was lost, and Orth's and Rochaar's tanks were circling the Martian globe along a short southern latitude, and Noctis Labyrinthus was under siege, but the possibility was real that Srequi Lantrane would die before she saw the Dragon's dawn. Though Hellas would still be a very winnable battle, and that would prolong things significantly.

And so she stood outside the pitted edifice of her forge, Wrought Axis, and stared out at the flats of Mars.

Hellas had always been the most temperate place on Mars. It was, the archives stated, a pleasant place to be in the edenic sense, a massive lake fringed by jungles. Now the lake had long since been drained, Mars's water suffering the same fate as Terra's. Real estate was too valuable to waste it on a barren expanse of fluids.

Such considerations did not apply to the giant planets, for some reason. The gods of the Golden Age of Technology had not drained Uranus and Neptune of their water, or Jupiter and Saturn of their hydrogen. Perhaps they could not. That was, in the end, a distinct possibility, even with those heroic times.

But Srequi Lantrane suspected it had been something else, a desire not to perturb the universe too much in ways whose consequences were unknown. The humans of the Golden Age had known and been capable of much more than the modern Mechanicum. Had they truly been any more active, though?

Well, that knowledge was lost, a tragedy within the greater tragedy of the fall. The first fall, as it seemed it was fated to be.

Lantrane looked back at her forge, or the half of it that remained. A bluish-tinted haven, once approximately circular in shape. The Iron Hands' attack had come in from the north and, effectively, taken a bite out of Wrought Axis, one that amounted to half its useful area. From here, a knob to the west side of the complex (though of course Lantrane was standing on metal that was also part of her forge, of a subsidiary area, below her – there was no empty space on Mars), the dome appeared to be nearly intact. Great columns around its perimeter processed ores and other chemicals, feeding into great conveyor belts that snaked around, both before and below her, ultimately being turned into food, weapons, and infrastructure. Each of Mars's forges was nearly self-sufficient, which had been a massive benefit in this war.

And yet, to Lantrane's gaze, the injuries Wrought Axis had sustained were evident. There was the dome, which had partially caved in, in a manner that from this point of view was difficult but possible to see. There were the impact craters that dotted the columns' surface, not from meteorites but from low-powered ammunition. A few more minutes of shooting this inaccurate, and Wrought Axis would have been completely gone. But Lantrane didn't care about hypotheticals.

The Iron Hands did want Mars intact, at least in theory. Losses such as these were regrettable for both sides. Materiel was, after all, still being sent out from Mars, at least the Astarte-controlled areas, to support the invasions of the Great Crusade. But Ferrus Manus cared about such things less and less as time went on, and at this rate, half of Mars would be a level plain by the end of the war.

And Lantrane clenched her fists, both her biological right hand's and the mechatendrils that replaced her left. The Mechanicum's lifetime was supposed to be geologic. It was supposed to be long enough that dunes would cover their towers, strange metallic trees would grow from sludge pools, and the great monuments of humanity would drown before the Quest for Knowledge, in its endless variety, ceased. It could not end like this.

And it would not. No matter how difficult the battle might be, and how many blunders the Order's Inner Circle made, Mars would endure, and the gambit with the Dragon would work. Because the alternative was unthinkable, and irrelevant.

"Excuse me?" a voice asked behind her, in Gothic.

It was a grating voice, metallic and clearly made by a machine, but also completely otherworldly. It spoke, in its intonation, of things Srequi Lantrane had no correlation for. Most strikingly of all, this information was picked up by her noocables (if only Zeth had finished that noospheric project!) despite them not being plugged in, and despite them not being calibrated to pick up information. Confused, but intrigued, Magos Srequi Lantrane turned around, to come face-to-face with a silver skeleton.

It stood, its eyes giving no sign of what, if anything, it was thinking. Its metallic skin slightly shimmered; its lower part was covered by four strips of what seemed like copper. Blue globules of power shone at bright points in its body, and a mysterious symbol inside what looked like a coffin shone in the middle of its ribcage. Its skull was topped with a golden 'headdress', and its eyes glowed a piercing blue. Its right hand held a halberd twice its height, whose blade looked like a force weapon, though its hilt was downright bizarre, unlike any melee weapon Lantrane had seen and likewise carved with unknown symbols.

"What are you?" Lantrane asked, as respectfully as she could, keeping in mind that she was unarmed. Was this some Iron Hand invention?

"I am Anrakyr," he said, and Lantrane's noocables picked up unfamiliarity with the language. "I am merely… a traveler."

Lantrane paused. "You are not here to kill me, are you?"

"I do not know who you are," Anrakyr stated. "I only wish... assistance in a task of mine."

It was then that Lantrane's mind registered the reality of the situation. Anrakyr was not being controlled by a human, she could tell that much. She was facing –

"Are you an… artificial intelligence?" she asked.

"Not precisely," he answered. "Not one constructed by your species, certainly."

So this thing was not just an abominable intelligence, but a _xeno_ abominable intelligence. It was, in every sense and fashion, opposed to every piece of the Mechanicum's principles. At the moment, though, Lantrane had greater concerns. "How did you get here?" she asked.

"My ship was shot down," he explained. "That will make it more difficult, though not overly so, to… complete my mission. I have no interest in the battle for this world, but it was an unexpected distraction."

"I see," Lantrane said, trying to inconspicuously back away.

"You may leave if you desire," Anrakyr said, "as you are obviously a human of some importance here; but I would ask that you send a servant to accompany me."

Lantrane paused.

Anrakyr was in every sense opposed to her creed, and had just stated that he had no interest in aiding the war effort. He was nothing more than a random, and very dangerous, distraction. But at the same time, he probably possessed untold technological marvels; and beyond that, Lantrane was just curious. That was the whole point of the Martian Mechanicum, was it not? Curiosity, even when it went beyond what most humans would consider acceptable. And it wasn't as if there was anything to be gained, now, by staying behind.

"That will not be necessary," Lantrane said. "I will accompany you."

Anrakyr's eyes twinkled, though Lantrane wasn't sure what emotion that indicated. "You need not do so if you do not desire to; and I am giving you fair warning that it will be dangerous."

"It is dangerous," Lantrane reasoned, "but I presume it is also interesting, at least for me, and important. After all, I deduce you are no servitor yourself."

"That I am not," Anrakyr accepted. "I am, to be clear, the Overlord of the planet Pyrrhia; though I have always desired to wander, more than most. And this is a rather important task, though one whose details I cannot yet reveal to you."

Lantrane nodded, sending a few last orders to automate Wrought Axis's defenses until her possible return. "You ruled a world?"

"I still rule Pyrrhia, in absentia. Though it may be some time before I return." Anrakyr swept his gaze across the industrial landscape. "This planet…. Someone moved its position in the galactic plane since I have been here last."

"The humans of the Golden Age of Technology moved Terra to a more central position in the galaxy, as befits the homeworld of humanity."

"Terra – is it the third world from your star?"

"Indeed."

Anrakyr's head vibrated. "Of course," he said, and Lantrane supposed he was laughing. "Of course it all comes back here." He looked around, taking in the landscape, and hurled his gaze at Terra itself, invisible in the gray sky – invisible to human eyes, that is. "Come with me, then. I assume you have the access codes to the tunnels under the surface."

"I do," Lantrane said, "but in some areas of Mars, the ongoing war may have destroyed them. Where are we going?" She was nearly running; her bionically enhanced limbs were barely able to keep up with Anrakyr's pace.

Anrakyr gave her the coordinates.

"Noctis Labyrinthus," she said, and suddenly her world expanded. The Dragon was real – there was no other reasonable explanation. And freeing it was critical, even for one such as Anrakyr. "Wait," she said. "We are there to free the Dragon?"

Anrakyr froze and whipped his head around in an instant. "Free the Dragon? Do you know what the Dragon is –"

"Srequi Lantrane. No, I do not know what it is exactly, but I do know it is our god."

There was a long pause, Lantrane walking up to Anrakyr as her companion seemed frozen in thought, or perhaps memory. "They were our gods too," he said eventually, resuming his walk. "Until we learned better. The thing you call the Dragon, Srequi – it is merely a shard of a greater being, or more accurately a greater monster. It possesses significant intellect, albeit tainted by madness, but its ultimate goal is exclusively destruction. It thirsts for energy, and has no sense of morality or honor. It might try to trick those unaware of its true nature into releasing it, but afterwards, if it is able, it will act as a demon of death, leaving nothing living on this planet save those temporarily useful to it. With sufficient weaponry, of course, it can be fought. With specific equipment, it can be captured. But this shard, which you call the Dragon, is particularly strong, and will be difficult to deal with, though not impossible."

"Is this why you seek it out? To destroy it?"

"No," Anrakyr said. "My need is informational."

And then, suddenly, everything settled into Magos Srequi Lantrane's mind; and Omnissiah, but it made sense, perfect sense!

Perfect, magnificent, and terrible sense. The Dragon was a god, but not a god worthy of worship. The Order was going to destroy Mars, just as much as the Iron Hands – more than the Iron Hands. She wanted to deny it, to complain at the utterly untrustworthy sources, but it fit together too well. The truth was horrid, but clear.

"I need to contact the Order," Lantrane said, her synapses firing at extra speed from the chemicals automatically being injected into her brain. "They actually want to release the Dragon. And if they do…."

"And they will listen to you?"

"…No. But at least warning them would be worthwhile."

"No," Anrakyr said, locking his eyes (and presumably his aim) onto her, "warning them that they have a new foe is not worthwhile. The Dragon will not be released, no matter the price that must be paid."

Lantrane grudgingly nodded. She had betrayed the Imperium (well, more the converse), betrayed Zeth and Kane, and ultimately betrayed the Order of the Dragon. But each individual decision had been logical, and if she was to betray everything in the name of knowledge, then she supposed she ought to be willing to do anything for an ideal she was willing to die for.

They walked, and then Lantrane saw a foreign object, a black skimmer glowing with blue runes, in the shape of two intersecting crescents. There was a standing platform at their intersection. And Lantrane's noocables screamed in joy at the vast quantities of untranslatable information that swirled everywhere around the barge. Separately, Anrakyr and Lantrane climbed onto the barge.

"You have placed a lot of trust for me in a short amount of time," Anrakyr observed, as his weapon seemed to wind down.

"Curiosity," Lantrane answered, "more than trust." And then the skimmer took off, flying toward a tunnel entrance. "Actually, could we converse in binary?"

"Our binary," Anrakyr said, "is different from yours. And when you as we have become, you savor the imprecisions of biological language more than you hate them, like some paradoxical delicacy, or art in general."

Lantrane nodded, though privately she wondered if Anrakyr was understanding what she meant by these gestures. "The closest entrance to the tunnel networks is below us." She leaned out, dropping a mechatendril to the metallic ground and snapping it open.

Then, she was nearly thrown out of the skimmer by its sudden drop, as it rotated in gyroscopic fashion before it slammed through the tunnel. Barely holding on, Lantrane noted that they were no longer hovering, but rather outright flying.

"How does this even work?" she asked, having to adjust her voice to the barge's total silence.

"Vault anti-gravity," Anrakyr said, "engineered to perfection. Getting the eddies right nearly drove the crypteks that designed the Annihilation Barge insane. But the result is nearly perfect control of three-dimensional motion, and simultaneously extremely efficient energy management." Anrakyr then swerved the barge millimeters under a particularly low bar, rather proving his point.

"It will still take us some time to reach the Labyrinth," Lantrane observed. "But we should be there much faster than the Order's army."

"That is fast enough," Anrakyr said, his headdress suddenly releasing streamers that billowed in the wind the skimmer was generating, and his head slightly vibrating. "What is the current disposition?"

He was quieter, and the skimmer slowed down somewhat, as Lantrane gave him the overall summary of the War for Mars. "The Emperor is now a psychic tyrant," she said. "So we turned to the Dragon, but our hopes were, it seemed, unwise. I had my suspicions about this god long before I met you."

"Of course," Anrakyr said, "of course this is how it would begin. As the homeworld foretold. The Emperor has made deals with Warp entities, you say?"

"Yes," Lantrane noted.

"But it appears that the galaxywide rebellion is only beginning. Well, not an exact mirror, and it never would have been. But that confirms my worst fears, Srequi, in accordance with the divinations."

Lantrane looked at Anrakyr's skeletal form. It seemed difficult to believe the living machine had any fears; he seemed more like fear incarnate. "What were they?"

"That my mission is necessary. That this, Srequi Lantrane, is the final crimson dawn of the End Times, and the potential doom of all things in this universe. And that fear is why I journeyed, to ensure that hope remained, driven – for once – by my people. To ensure that this is not, after all, the end. An iron dawn, to avoid final dusk."


	14. Interlude: Messenger

Lorgar Aurelian, the Urizen, Primarch of the Word Bearers and conduit of the Chaos Gods, stood and faced the quicksilver mirror.

His golden face was etched with the vertical writings of his renewed faith, as was the rose-golden armor that encased the rest of his body. The Emperor's final acceptance of both his own divinity and the other, primordial gods had uplifted Lorgar in position; but it had elevated him even more in confidence.

Blood had been spilled, and now he was walking, like the other Primarchs, towards his inevitable and wondrous destiny. And unlike his brothers, he did so without doubt and with head held high. He was the bridge, the bearer of divine illumination. More than the Word – the full Truth, barely comprehensible even to one such as him.

The mirror shimmered, and the scowl of Ulrach Branthan, Sixty-Fifth Captain of the Iron Hands, appeared to face the Urizen.

"My lord," the kneeling Astarte said.

"Branthan," Lorgar replied. "What news from Mars?"

"Ferrus has not reconsidered," Branthan said. "He maintains his ban on use of the Warp and worship of the gods, my lord. He…." Lorgar noted that the Iron Hand's fists had been clenched, in fury against his own Primarch.

That was not good – it went too far, by far. Branthan had been meant as a spy and a test, not to hate his father. Either Lorgar had been too successful, or too extreme. Even now, there was much he had to learn about oration.

"Then act as you see fit," Lorgar calmly replied. "He must see the truth of the Gods in time."

"He will not," Branthan replied. "His madness has gone too far for that."

"Act as you see fit," Lorgar said, and with his frustration and Branthan's barely concealed fury ripples began to spread across the mirror's surface. To Branthan, in orbit around Mars, Lorgar would appear to stand in a corner of his room, so long as the Astarte did not approach too close to the hologram. "For the Emperor and for Chaos."

"For Chaos and the Emperor," Branthan replied in agreement as the connection slightly stabilized before abruptly failing with a sweep of Lorgar's hand. The Primarch began to pace the room as Branthan vanished from sight, considering his agent's place.

It seemed Branthan was ill-positioned in his own Legion by this point. He had, of course, indicated to Lorgar that a significant portion of the Iron Hands would follow him over Ferrus Manus, but Lorgar did not believe him. It took more than recovery to turn a Legion against its Primarch.

Lorgar could have helped, of course, but he would never do so. Ferrus was a friend – a loyal friend, such as Magnus no longer was. Angron would raze Prospero, a broken brother breaking another, and Magnus would scream from the Warp in vengeance. And, in the end, Magnus the Red would likely be ended at the Red Angel's hands. But Ferrus was loyal, honest, and now strong once more. And if the path he tread was not quite Lorgar's own, well, all of them had distinct destinies.

No, Ferrus Manus would be left well alone, to prosecute the Martian War as he saw fit. And Lorgar would have his brother back, and perhaps more.

And Branthan – well, Lorgar didn't particularly care about him, anymore.


	15. Chapter Ten

Durak Rask looked at the strategic map warily, still impressed by the sheer variety of Martian warfare. Despite his experience, the details of the three-dimensional fighting on the Red Planet were mind-bogglingly complex, and not only to him.

All of which was not to deny that the general shape was quite simple. The Magma City was besieged, and fighting to defend it was ongoing.

Adepts Zeth and Wernitian, the leaders of the Martian priesthood on Horus's side, stood to Rask's left, staring at the same map and its vast, but quite clear, variety of symbols. Lgalun, Rask's chosen second-in-command, was to his right.

"The Mondus Occulum will be almost entirely destroyed by now," Lgalun observed. "I am not sure how much we will be able to save, at this rate."

"We will be able to save Kane," Zeth stated. "Who is the rightful Fabricator-General."

Wernitian nodded. "He is crucial, at the very least, to avoid conflict over leadership within the Mechanicum in the future."

"It is decided," Rask said, and the others fell silent. "We will attempt the rescue. Four Death Guard squads will go. I will lead personally, and Squads Riolasa, Sofev, and Saxeost will accompany me. Aeronautical insertion, plan A-2."

"That will not be a large amount of material, or of records," Wernitian objected.

"Our objective is Kane," Rask stated. "Not knowledge." Wernitian severely frowned, as Rask could tell by the slight motion of his cheek-studs; his mask gave no other sign of emotion. Nevertheless, the adept did not object. He had reason, after all, to be happy that this rescue mission was even happening; Lgalun was correct in the risks, both for the strike force and for the Magma City. The Iron Hands were not yet aware that Rask was here, putting down the few enemy Astartes to defector Iron Hands; and that too would almost certainly change after this flight, inviting a larger attack force against the somewhat ignored stronghold, the evacuation of which was far from complete. "The council," Rask said, "is adjourned."

Risk, and sacrifice; but a Space Marine did not run from those. And this was why they were on Mars, anyhow.

There was no use in waiting, and so Rask called his forces to him, heading towards the _Antrekor_ , a particularly large gunship attached to the Magma City that would, according to the chosen plan, be Rask's effective flagship for this flight. Rising on the staircase, he noted the increased din below; albeit it had come at a severe cost in evacuation rate, the Magma City had been bolstered by abundant personnel and materials from Wernitian's forge, which had fallen three days earlier.

Kane's Mondus Occulum seemed like it would soon follow, which had caused the council in the first place.

Rask emerged into the hangar and beheld the massive, dark gray gunship for no time at all before focusing on his brothers, which were – one by one – arriving in the large room. Fifty-four Space Marines, with two casualties in Squad Saxeost thanks to a Titan. Riolasa's squad, many of whom had begun to integrate Martian relics into their armaments. And Sofev and Saxeost, good friends and particularly fierce fighters that nevertheless retained full self-control. They would listen to Rask's orders, and never tended towards savagery.

Not that Mineceno's current condition was savagery, per se. Rask didn't even know how to describe it. And the failure to save his subordinate nagged at him greatly: Mineceno's path led only to death. More importantly, he had ceased to be useful, even if he remained stoic enough to distant eyes.

"Death Guard!" Rask declared. "The centerpiece of our mission is here. We are saving the master of the Mechanicum, Fabricator General Kane, and what else we can from his forge." He swept his gaze around the assembled Marines. "In the name of Barbarus. Let's begin."

They did, gradually, Durak Rask's own squad following him into the _Antrekor_. The others were divided among nine smaller gunships, preparing to fight their way towards Kane's lair, the only spot of hope in a sea of warring traitors. Soon enough, they took off. Riolasa's _Sanikra Ondatikra_ led the loose formation; the _Antrekor_ brought up the rear.

They followed a winding path, skirting the eastern flanks of Pavonis Mons. From time to time, intact batteries fired at them from below; but so long as they were not bombing anything, many of the machine-spirits simply did not judge it worthwhile to attack the armada. Even they were tired, like so many in the Tharsis region seemed to be; but the Death Guard did not tire. Neither, truth be told, did the Iron Hands, given their recent offensives.

Besides, they had enough power to flatten anything that fired at them without too much difficulty. For now.

Pavonis Mons deviated from the flight path, and then its shallow cone began to recede in the distance. Titan wreckage littered the valley floor below. The factories of Mars kept on producing material, and it kept on being spent in those ceaseless battles.

Rask shook off his awe at the tenacity on display. This war of attrition was not one the tech-priests would win. They should have strategized better, perhaps attempted to gain aid from Horus for a single and devastating strike on Terra. Instead, they had left humanity behind and chosen to seek salvation not from themselves, or from another, but from lies. Lies that now led to oblivion.

Not that truth always led to triumph – Rask recognized that much.

He guided the flotilla towards the approaching slopes of Ascraeus Mons, and was soon greeted by Titan fire. Three machines: a Reaver and two Scout Titans. The Antrekor responded with similar shots, one getting a lucky strike that pushed a Reaver off-balance; before it could recover, the Death Guard were gone, the Warhounds choosing not to follow. Both of Saxeost's gunships were severely damaged, but the ten kept flying.

They went closer to the ground this time, for fear of orbital bombardment. It did not come. There were some shots from underpowered guns, and –

Rask winced as one of them hit a previous hole in Saxeost's hull, and then the entire gunship exploded into fire, taking one of Riolasa's two-seaters with it. Rask could barely watch as the flaming wrecks smashed into the ground. They fell straight onto the – guerilla skitarii, perhaps?

Eleven of his battle-brothers, lost in that one shot. Though significantly more than nine of the Dragon's servants perished as well.

"They fell unbroken," Rask said over the vox, "and avenged themselves." The emplacements were already far behind. He ordered some changes in formation, coordinated with Riolasa, to help prevent this sort of vulnerability with the damaged ship that carried the remnants of Squad Saxeost. If it went down from a lucky shot, it would at least not take anything else with it; and the chances of that would be minimized.

They flew along Ascraeus Mons, iron designs on the surfaces below, many mirroring the sky; the sun was nearing dusk. No more shots, only wrecks. They descended, too, from the near-cosmic heights of Tharsis; the _Antrekor_ 's engine hummed much more delightfully at that.

And in the distance, Mondus Occulum was beginning to be clearly seen. It sat on the edge of the northern plains, where Tharsis met what had been Mars's polar ocean – had been both billions of years ago, and in the time shortly after terraforming. Now, the only water left was saturated with metallic ions, and flowed for the most part underground.

It stood, a crumbling mountain of its own, and around it siege lines were drawn. Rask ordered another realignment, conversing with Riolasa to get the finer points of the spearhead.

This time, there were sure to be losses. But Rask accepted those; saving Kane was critical.

Indeed, given that the planned grand evacuation of knowledge had been impossible, Rask suspected that they were their best retrospective reason for coming here in the first place.

There was a shield of static around the forge; communication was unreliable, even at this distance. Riolasa sent several pings to Mondus Occulum, repeating their intent to help the Fabricator-General. No way existed of telling whether they had been received by Kane.

Then, the storm. Rask calmly ordered the gunships to fire back, laying down a streak of death. Saxeost's squad fell an instant later, as Riolasa pinged Kane more and more furiously. If that void shield stayed up, blocking the Death Guard from entering the forge, they'd have to –

And then, before Rask could finish that thought, space rippled before them and the _Sanikra Ondatikra_ led the way into Mondus Occulum. It was smoking in a couple of places, but overall completely intact. Sofev's flagship, with ten Marines, followed.

Fire was concentrating on the _Antrekor_ now, and Rulvon Atigrarin – the gunship's current pilot, probably the quickest of Rask's squad – reported that they'd lost a main gun. Riolasa's and Sofev's two-man fighters (all five of them) wove circles, both distracting the gunners below and sending precision shots back. And then, one by one, the impacts stopped, as the siege lines focused on breaking open the main shields once again.

"Losses?" Riolasa asked through the vox, as the _Antrekor_ descended towards a large landing strip in the side of Kane's forge, where the _Sanikra Ondatikra_ and Sofev's _Coboan_ were already resting.

Rask looked at his screens again. "All the fighters survived," he reported. "Squad Saxeost gone in full. So passes the light of day; so passes the glory of worlds. So pass all things. May you find solace in absence and in memory, my brothers."

"For you will not be forgotten," Squads Rask, Riolasa, and Sofev echoed. But there was no time for true remembrance, not now.

They'd need some time for repairs in Kane's forge; it still looked capable of that much, at least. Rask calmed, even as the _Antrekor_ became the last gunship to settle into a stop on the landing pad.

And as Rask exited the ship, a transhuman, surrounded by four heavily armed servitors, emerged from the interior.

He was red-cloaked, and his shadowed face was an intricate design of metal interwoven with flesh. His body below seemed fairly close to human, though the metallic tentacles emerging from various ports in his robe demonstrated that he was not completely such. His legs were invisible, but he appeared to have four – two of them entirely mechanical.

"Greetings," Fabricator-General Kane of the Martian Mechanicum said. "Welcome to the Mondus Occulum. I hope you are here to rescue myself and the associated knowledge?"

"Indeed," Rask said.

"On whose behalf? The Order would hardly employ Space Marines."

"Horus Lupercal has risen in rebellion, nine of his Primarch brothers alongside him," Rask said, and Kane's face contorted into a crooked, but undoubtedly honest, grin.

"Then there is hope," Kane said. "I have already sent the command for evacuation."

Rask nodded. "We will need the gunships repaired –"

"There is no time for that," Kane observed. "The shield will fall in a matter of minutes, now. I have uploaded all the knowledge I could manage to my own components; my remaining staff will board the gunships. If I jack into the _Antrekor_ , I believe in my ability to get out. But the Mondus Occulum – you came in the nick of time, Durak Rask of the Death Guard. It will fall. There can be no more doubt about that."

Rask was stunned, though he wisely did not stay silent for long. Screaming orders to his squad, as well as Sofev and Riolasa, he set up defenses around the gunships – though among the slowest of the Legions, Death Guard still had reflexes far faster than any human. Meanwhile, servitors carried various objects in, and Adepts rushed on board the _Antrekor_ , _Sanikra Ondatikra_ , and _Coboan_.

"That's enough," Riolasa said five-point-seven minutes after the evacuation commenced. "We cannot afford to lose any more maneuverability from added weight."

Kane spun around to face the sergeant. "We need to get my people out!"

"No," Rask said. "We won't get anything out if we get shot down, which remains a distinct possibility."

"But-"

"No more time," Sofev said, glancing at the Marines behind him. "Get on board the _Antrekor_ , Fabricator-General. The shield is falling."

"I thought we had two –"

But Kane's protest at his calculations being wrong was cut off as the shield fell, in the space of a millisecond, and the firepower of the Tenth Legion's artillery (along with that of some Martian Imperials) slammed into the forge complex proper.

Kane ran into the _Antrekor_ , getting off a few shots in the besiegers' general directions with his plasma pistol. The fighters lifted off. All was chaotic, the din of a battle's closing stages.

And the Death Guard fired back as they slowly and calmly retreated.

If there had been more time, Rask would have had plans. Perhaps he would have gone up to the siege lines, started a close-quarters fight to distract the attackers in a position where their firepower advantage was not critical. But they had what they had, and not all was lost. The _Sanikra Ondatikra_ , least damaged of the three gunships, took off first.

"We leave simultaneously," Rask told Sofev, who was holding onto the _Coboan_ 's side as he fired.

And then the signal, and plastered to the _Antrekor_ 's side, Durak Rask was in the air. Sofev's _Coboan_ rose alongside it, and then they were speeding forward, shields and thrust at max capacity, nearly weaponless. The void shield around Durak Rask, which was weak enough anyhow, crackled with pain; he risked sticking his bolter arm out, getting off three shots at Iron Hand commanders (sergeants, he guessed) before he felt the pain in his hand and two more before the bolter fell out of his grip. Rask retracted his numb arm into the shield's range, watching the siege lines pass below.

Black and gray, in concentric circles, atop red rock and corroded metal.

It took them under ten seconds to pass through the worst of the firestorm; it felt like an eternity. But, still numb from his crushed right hand, Durak Rask barely recognized being pulled inside the _Antrekor_. Or perhaps it was the Martian air, thin and cold at this height? Astartes could survive far, far worse, but harsh conditions made themselves felt, even to a Space Marine.

He regained full awareness quickly enough.

"No more losses?" he asked.

"Only Mondus Occulum," grumbled a tech-priest Rask did not know. "Only the best remaining archive on Mars. Nothing _you_ find important."

Then he convulsed, as if from electric shock, as Kane came out into the main compartment.

"Apologies for my colleague's rudeness," the Fabricator-General said, nodding to the bitter Adept. He nodded back, though rather less naturally and less comfortably. "Durak Rask of the Fourteenth Legion, I thank you abundantly for our evacuation. I would heap praise on you for your courage and skill in conducting it, but such compliments would be unnecessary, given how obvious your worth has been." He turned slightly to the left, and Rask had the distinct feeling that there was some form of communication here that he was missing, between the tech-priests, perhaps the arcane noospheric matters they sometimes mentioned. "I deduce we are headed to the Magma City, and then off-planet somehow?"

"Precisely," Rask said. "An archaeotech portal. Adepts Wernitian and Zeth are there as well."

"And they are all that is left of the Mechanicum on Mars?"

Rask did not give a clear reply, but that seemed to be enough for the Fabricator-General.

"Well," Kane concluded, extending his hand with evident sadness, "the Mechanicum will side with Horus Lupercal." Had Kane preferred the independence of the Order of the Dragon, but known he was incapable of preserving it?

It did not matter. Rask firmly extended his own, wounded hand, and clasped Kane in a somewhat off-balance warrior's grip.


	16. Chapter Eleven

Hellas Basin was a lost dream, having degenerated from a terrarium to a titanic complex of factories, and now increasingly to a hellish ruin.

Castrmen Orth could not truly bring himself to care, but he suspected, on some level, that he should. Progress was being damaged here, after all. Branthan had correctly observed that such blasted landscapes were useful grounds for experimentation, but there were other wastelands in the galaxy – lots of them. More and more with each war.

The Milky Way galaxy contained a trillion planets, of which only ten billion were easily accessible by the Warp. More than ninety percent of those worlds were dead and useless as anything except weapons ranges.

No, Castrmen Orth did not desire Mars to be left desolate, and in truth neither did Branthan, or even Ferrus Manus. Perhaps the traitor Death Guard did – it had shocked Orth deeply, but narrowly, when he had discovered that some of his cousins had joined in the rebellion – but no one with a claim to the Red Planet wanted anything but the best for it. But sometimes there was no better choice.

And so Orth, along with fellow centurion Uninen Rochaar, fought the penultimate battle of the Martian War, dancing with death and treachery across a craggy vista of oil and metal. They fought in parallel, and an outsider would think they were effortlessly winning every confrontation. That was far from true – though he and Rochaar were synchronized perfectly, and though the battle was indeed going quite well, his still-understrength spearhead was not achieving this easily. Not even close.

Nevertheless, that was part of what made this conflict worthwhile. It was perfection, in the Emperor's Children sense of the term. Terrible, difficult, and made great by those very qualities.

The other part of why Castrmen Orth was enjoying the battle for Hellas, one quite unrelated to even the fact that they were winning, was that it gave him an excuse to avoid even thinking about Ulrach Branthan. The Captain of Clan Erigez had not lied to Orth; he truly believed that his approach to Chaos was correct. And it did give him and his allies, including Orth, great power.

Only Castrmen Orth did not believe in discarding inconvenient truths, and Ulrach Branthan apparently did; and Cadmus Tyro's fate was extremely inconvenient.

"We have seen gods' perfection, so surrender your metal," the centurion muttered to himself as _Rashemion_ prepared to engage another splinter of Mechanicum armor. "Aether-flesh is the zenith, and we'll prove it in battle."

It did not sound convincing. And as Orth closed his eyes to try and recall the glory Branthan's approach offered, he instead saw the half-comatose, failing body of Cadmus Tyro, pathetically crying out for more blackfate. The lieutenant had gone on a rampage, shortly before the end. None of them had possessed the heart to kill their battle-brother in those seven minutes, and so his body had done the job itself.

And the issue was, they had followed the decremental regimen perfectly. No drug known to the Imperium had addictive properties as strange as blackfate in Tyro's case. But Branthan could not afford to move slowly, and did not want to, either. And he had told Orth, before he'd left for Hellas, that his movement was going to go further.

No. No matter. There was no way back, and one would be undesirable anyhow. Ferrus's position was untenable, and none of this mattered anyhow.

Battle was about to be joined.

Castrmen Orth filtered away his distractions, his doubts, and his regrets. The Martian War would not be won by the weak. No, in this place of abandoned forges, there was only will, certainty, and strength. There was only fire and iron.

There was only war. And, at one of the two foci of that war, Castrmen Orth, youngest of the Young Squid, Spearhead-Centurion of the Iron Hands.

 _Rashemion_ 's flanking tanks, _Anaerem_ and _Nisorran_ , revved up and rolled out of the depression they had been concealed in, propelled in part by a Branthan-designed Warp propellant. The enemy tank, a superheavy so conclusively modified it could have no meaningful model designation, tried to skid to a halt on the ragged ground. In response, the Malcadors to Orth's sides punched into the enemy tank's frontal shields. Failing to correct for that, the tank spun in the opposite direction as the driver had planned, and the volley of shots it put out flew harmlessly into the distance rather than hitting Orth's group.

Mechanicum drivers were supposed to be better than that. No, Mechanicum drivers _were_ better than that. The tank had to be in the grip of a servitor, or – more likely yet – a simple machine-spirit.

That fact in his mind, Orth ordered _Rashemion_ to shoot the ground behind the opposing tank – _Ultimarket_ , the Centurion now read – with a number of its minor weapons, even as the frontal Accelerator Cannon discharged a tunneling density-core shell into _Ultimarket_ 's rear. The machine-spirit, confused, failed to react in time, allowing another opening for _Anaerem_ and _Nisorran_.

It only took seconds after that for the _Ultimarket_ to be totally crippled. Destroying it would be a waste of ammunition – although with no crew, a tank really did have to be obliterated to prevent it from being a danger. But immobile, shieldless, and bereft of its three main weapons, _Ultimarket_ would be a sitting duck for a sufficiently large bomb, which Orth ordered in as he drove to the west once more.

 _Rashemion_ trudged on, moving to intercept another – no, that was an artefact. The mop-up was nearly complete. The defenders of Hellas Basin, still with significant forces, had gathered themselves into a defensive ring around Cerulean Core, the last entirely intact forge in Hellas, and the neighboring, abandoned Wrought Axis.

Orth gave orders for his forces to arrange themselves in the lull. As far as the Mechanicum defenders were concerned, the battle was about to become a siege. The shields that covered their two forges, when they were fully active, would combine with the weapon emplacements to make an unstormable fortress. The Iron Hands had the capacity to bring it down, of course, but that would take months – long enough for the Noctis Labyrinthus battle to conclude.

That would not be an apocalyptic outcome. But neither Orth nor Rochaar wanted the glory of the Young Squid to be usurped, even by the Primarch. They would win in Hellas on their own merits, and not via the surrender that would inevitably come after the Order's defeat in Tharsis.

And so _Rashemion_ rode onto a platform that had taken on the appearance of a parapet, or perhaps merely a balcony overlooking a titanic pit – a pit to whose other side lay Cerulean Core. It was not impossible for the battalion to cross this hole, but it would take too long and be too risky to give any meaningful blow to the traitors. Similarly, going around would give the Order of the Dragon too much time to regroup. The siege was inevitable, and not in Castrmen Orth's power to stop.

Fortunately, he was only here to watch.

From the sky above Cerulean Core, a rain of iron fell. Astartes usually descended from the heavens via drop-pods; but the circumstances were different here. From this distance, they looked like strange, obsidian-black cubical and polyhedral toys, descending on vast parachutes. They slowly penetrated the force fields protecting Cerulean Core and Wrought Axis from the bombs above, forcing the rogue tech-priests to calculate and recalculate all the inevitable configurations of their doom. They glided down on winds that would be far too weak to protect them anywhere on Mars – anywhere on Mars, besides the dense-aired center of the Hellas Basin. They released their parachutes, and one by one, smashed into the forge complexes. The weapon emplacements within Cerulean Core fell silent, one by one, taken apart from the back. Adepts ran around like so many rodents, tiny dots even to Orth's enhanced sight, barely even noticed enough to be gunned down. And then, with fire and iron, the spearhead's guns turned on the supports of Cerulean Core, and then the scene was an orderly column of black tanks riding out of a crumbling forge. From a distant tank, Rochaar noted his admiration, along with a pair of snide tactical remarks. Orth merely offered his congratulations on battle's end.

Cadmus Qevpilum had returned to Mars.

The communications channel sprung open, and Orth saw the face of his brother Centurion. Qevpilum had eschewed a helmet for the moment, though with his cybernetic ears and jaw, that did not make him look any less intimidating.

"It's good to be back in known space," he commented. "So what would you have done without my convenient presence?"

"Gotten someone else to parachute in," Rochaar said. "Probably on drop-pods. Now _that_ would be interesting to see."

"The machine-spirits would be outraged," Qevpilum noted, and then he laughed. Orth couldn't help but smile at his friend's return, himself. "You won't believe how good it is to be among you again, against enemies I can shoot."

"Right," Rochaar said, "about that. If I may ask, what _happened_ on Pyrrhia?"

Qevpilum looked pensive, at that, and hesitated before replying. "We failed. And not because we were weak, but because we were strong."

Rochaar shrugged. "We all have had our defeats, whether true or relative. The important thing is that they are minute relative to our victories."

"Yes," Qevpilum said, "but this seemed like more."

Rochaar repeated his previous gesture, this time in a more relaxed manner. "Deduce the necessary tactical lessons, but don't imagine that this invalidates Legion doctrine. Besides, losses were not apocalyptic, I deduce?"

Orth mentally disconnected. Rochaar's interrogation of Qevpilum was good-natured, but he suspected that it would not change Qevpilum's opinion on anything. Because unlike Rochaar, Orth had read Qevpilum's report on the Pyrrhian incident.

Cadmus Qevpilum had seen, there, the weaknesses of the machine. Orth knew that this posed a crucial opportunity to convert him to Branthan's faction, and indeed that he needed to do just that, for the sake of the Legion. But he didn't actually want to. In large part, it was simply that he didn't want to lose his friend, in the way Tyro had been lost. He wanted Cadmus Qevpilum to live, or failing that, to die in war in a fashion befitting a Space Marine. If Strigeus, or Ousautro, suffered Tyro's face, Orth would feel regret. But if another of the Young Squid did….

And even failing that, there was the risk of falling in fraternal conflict, because Branthan's path was dangerous in so many other ways. Sometimes Orth wondered just how much the Captain of Erigez knew about the undercurrents in the Legion, and to which extent he knew the danger he was in. Not that Orth could precisely quantify it himself, but he had tried to several times, and had concluded it was desirable to reduce it significantly.

And now, Branthan was prepared for the address that would finalize his potential suicide. Orth was a Space Marine, and felt no fear, but Branthan's attitude went beyond that. Perhaps it was the aether-flesh?

As Orth refocused, Rochaar grunted in frustration. "Please, Cadmus. We are warriors, after all. Space Marines."

"We are not merely Space Marines," Qevpilum said. "We are Iron Hands. Friends to Mars, in every decade – except, apparently, this one. No, Rochaar, I do not deny this war is necessary, but –"

"But nothing," Rochaar insisted. "Pyrrhia has shaken you, Cadmus. I recognize that. But you yet have time to redeem yourself, and put it behind you."

"If we forget our defeats," Orth noted, "we will only repeat them. Legion doctrine is ever-changing, Rochaar."

Rochaar shrugged. "I am willing to change, but not to _be_ changed, at least not by my enemies. But you were right to retreat, Qevpilum. That incident was unwinnable."

"Warp powers might have won it," Orth observed.

Qevpilum shrugged. "Some other Legions might have been able to penetrate the traps, with severe losses. Perhaps Bylomic and myself will try again, when we are more prepared. But the given engagement was, indeed, unwinnable – I have calculated as much, since. Don't worry – I am not sinking into melancholy over that."

A screen flickered.

"Branthan is addressing the entire Legion," Rochaar observed. "Since when has he replaced Ferrus?"

And then the visage of Captain Ulrach Branthan, flanked by two other captains, filled a side screen. Orth kept the main link open, keeping a close eye on Cadmus Qevpilum's reaction.

"Brothers," Branthan declared. "Our great Primarch, Ferrus Manus, has risen from his madness into the light – or so it seems.

"And yet the turmoil within his soul has not truly ended. That much was proven by his very first order upon awakening, when he nonsensically denounced Chaos, the prima materia of the new Imperial Truth! Yes, brothers, our Primarch has undeniably faded. We must continue the work of progress without him. I, and those who agree with me, will no longer hide in fear of a ghost's wrath. The Legion, and Chaos, will endure!"

And then Branthan mercifully cut out. Orth winced for the third time at the speech. It was simply too aggressive, ruining too many friendships. The Legion was still too loyal, by and large, for something like this to stand.

Qevpilum's reaction was a perfect demonstration of that: he was staring at Branthan's vanished face with open mouth, cheek-gears grinding in incredulity. Rochaar, by contrast, seemed to seriously contemplate the statement before looking straight at Orth.

"The scariest thing," he observed, "is that Branthan is not entirely wrong. The second-scariest thing is that this is the Astarte in charge of our blockade."

Qevpilum disconnected. Orth was not sure precisely what was going on in his brother's head, but it was not anything sympathetic to the cause of Chaos.

"I'd have thought Ferrus would reply," Orth said.

"He will, soon enough," Rochaar guessed. "Branthan presumably used his Warpcraft to interfere with the voxnet. But I'll say, Castrmen – if you've got a half-strength version of this, I'm in. Otherwise, I really don't want to be with you when the Gorgon tears you into pieces for treason."

And Rochaar disconnected as well. Orth cursed, then cursed again. Branthan had doomed all of them with his fanaticism, and not even in an interesting way. With a groan, the centurion climbed out of the cupola and sat himself next to a rusty spike, at the crater's edge and a hundred meters away from Rashemion. His feet dangled off the rim, and his gaze was turned inward.

Castrmen Orth was still sitting, holding his head in his hands, when the vox from Ferrus Manus himself came in.

Frowning, the centurion accepted it. His allegiance with Branthan's faction was only technically a secret, after all.

"Lord father," he said.

"Castrmen," Ferrus replied, with a note of kindness that Orth had not expected to hear at this point. "So, what did you think of that speech?"

"I truly believed that Branthan was doing the best for the Iron Hands," the centurion noted. "Until now, I – I did not realize how much it was weakening the Legion."

"It is doing so indeed," Ferrus said, with surprising calm. "More than you think – a fair portion of the Legion will side with Branthan, even now. Others will leave, in fear for their heads, but be at the ready to betray my trust a second time. But that's not what you referred to when you said it was weakening the Legion, was it?"

And the pieces for how to get out, and for how to redeem himself in the Primarch's eyes, fell into place in Orth's head, even as he commented on Tyro's sad fate.

"And he will not be the last," Ferrus Manus confirmed. "So. Spearhead-Centurion Castrmen Orth. Would you keep an eye on Branthan on me, and ensure he doesn't do anything even more stupid?"

Orth could not agree fast enough.


	17. Interlude: Khagan

The cruiser _Death by Butterfly_ glided through the second spacetime maze, concluding its arc towards the lost world of Pyrrhia. A coven of five Stormseers guided the ship through the impossible spacescape, signaling the best path for the ship to the command throne.

There, Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars Legio Astartes, manually guided the cruiser, countless configurations of bent reality passing through his vast mind every second.

The cruiser flew effortlessly through the impossible convolution, an image of triumph; but the Primarch's brow was furrowed in anger, for they were moving not inwards, but outwards. The _Death by Butterfly_ had passed through the minefield without issue, had traversed the first impossible maze, had successfully dodged the set of asteroids and their obliterating fire, and had even succeeded in flying through the second maze in full manual mode, a feat unachievable without the combination of a Primarch's mind and potent psychic powers; and after emerging from that impossible journey, they had come into a pocket of realspace.

An empty pocket.

"A decoy," Sonsu Khan observed. The Khan of the Brotherhood of the Sand was discussing the mission with his counterpart, Noray Singh Khan, leader of the Brotherhood of the Ideal.

"It was not a decoy," Jaghatai Khan said on reflex. "Too many defenses for that…."

And then, as he twirled his moustache, something clicked within his unconscious, and then his conscious as well.

There had been a gap, in the first maze. It had not led through, and was clearly not the main path. But if one wanted to hide a planet, that gap would have been his own choice – not obvious, but not unfindable. No, not a gap. A gate.

"Pyrrhia was in the first maze," he stated when the _Death by Butterfly_ had emerged from the labyrinth, freeing enough of his mental capacity to express thoughts coherently. "The third Gelmarian gap is the most likely location."

"By Chogoris," Singh muttered as he remembered the first maze. "That… I do not know why the third, but that does make perfect sense."

Sonsu frowned; Jaghatai suspected he was not entirely sure what a Gelmarian gap was, and that the Stormseers were not either. Fortunately, that mattered little at the moment.

He guided the cruiser onwards, switching to assisted control when the anti-machine field was past. His brain seemed to sigh in relief – the sheer density of calculations needed to fly a spaceship without a cogitator's aid was intense, even for one such as him. Still, he'd been sufficient, as any of his brothers would have been.

His brothers…. The thought led, inevitably, back to his father. He had truly thought the Emperor of Mankind was different from all others who had once claimed that title. But, it seemed, he had never actually known his father. That, at least, was the more comforting option.

If the Emperor had not been lying, and had truly trusted in honor and freedom before so desperately throwing it all away, then Jaghatai was even more worried for the galaxy. If one so heroic could turn to darkness so utterly, then what hope did even one such as Horus Lupercal promise?

So, now, he had gone to Pyrrhia with a select few of his Legion, to help the war effort without taking his mind off these questions. Others would have tried to put them away – even many among the other Primarchs were embracing rage over peace. Another thing he would have to fix, when he returned to the war from Chogoris.

Chogoris, where he would pass from Pyrrhia.

The lone cruiser skimmed unreality, dancing like a faerie between the automated asteroids. Those did not have particular intelligence guiding them – a trick, Jaghatai knew, to make intruders confident to complacency. The White Scars had not made that mistake; if they had, they would never have survived the second maze, so much more trick-filled than the first.

And then they were back within that first. They flew slowly, now, barely faster than the minimum to avoid getting trapped in the temporal eddies. But they were faster nonetheless, gradually settling into a path that would allow them to be stationary before the gap in question. Jaghatai knew, intuitively, that this would be the gate hiding the wonder of Pyrrhia. How terrible that wonder was, though, remained to be seen.

The _Death by Butterfly_ turned, and then it was spinning, but remained otherwise motionless. Noray Singh was left guiding the rotation to ensure the ship did not fall into a compressive zone, to be crushed as by a singularity; Jaghatai looked at the codes on the gate.

It took him a full minute to understand.

The codes were constantly changing, evolving, in a manner that was impossible without an intelligence to guide them. Something was alive on Pyrrhia – something very intelligent, in fact, because even Jaghatai would have a hard time solving the code.

He could do it, of course. And if Pyrrhia was not a mere ruin, but an active world….

Then there was no need to poke the hornet nest. The Coalition of Horus had plenty of enemies already. They did not need to make more. And he would not risk begging for help from this unknown set, either, for they would have opened the gates a long time ago if they were prepared to offer it.

"We move on," Jaghatai Khan said. "There is nothing here for us. We fly for Chogoris, and for home."


	18. Chapter Twelve

_ArcaneArcade: To be clear, this story is set prior to_ The Emperor's Will _._

* * *

The command barge of Overlord Anrakyr of Pyrrhia hurtled through the tunnels south of Noctis Labyrinthus, with every turn getting closer to the Dragon's haven. On it, Anrakyr himself stood tall, a brilliant blue halberd standing adjacent and ready to be grabbed at less than a moment's notice.

Srequi Lantrane, formerly a Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, stood next to him, exchanging information with the xeno artificial intelligence. It was an act utterly forbidden and antithetical to the Mechanicum's ideals. Somehow, despite Lantrane's clear guilt, she felt not a trace of doubt about this path. The times were too desperate, and the exchange of information too fascinating.

Perhaps she was a traitor to the human race, but withholding something wouldn't change that, not by this point. Besides, Anrakyr was being increasingly open, himself. She respected that.

"Gender," Anrakyr said, "was a concept foreign to us. Necrontyr biology made no distinction between male and female. Some Old One philosophers tried to explain that through the toxic light of our star, but there are other exceptions to the two-gender rule: the Swirenn were also unisex, for instance, and the Kinelux had three sexes. A minor species in the galactic northeast, known as the Eureur, had no less than five genders, with certain sets of three being able to produce offspring. I believe they went extinct due to underpopulation. Even the Orks were mono-gendered, though the Old Ones designed them themselves."

"The Orks? Green, belligerent fungoids? They existed in your time?"

"Yes," Anrakyr observed, "their evolutionary ancestors were designed as weapons against us, during the War in Heaven. When I discovered they still plagued the galaxy to this day, I was extremely displeased. There were other species, too, though none of them were successful in stopping our advance."

"The Orks were our strongest foes in the Great Crusade," Lantrane said. "But why were they designed as a weapon? It seems illogical to create a weapon you could not control."

"They were more unified, when facing a unilateral threat. Moreover, they have undergone a devolution over the epochs. West or east?"

"West," Lantrane said. "And then we should emerge to the forbidden regions of the Labyrinth, which I have no data on."

"I should be able to detect the Dragon soon enough," Anrakyr said. "How big were the greatest Ork empires you faced during the Crusade?"

"Except for Ullanor and its satellite realms, only a few hundred worlds," Lantrane admitted, "though most of those were nomadic."

"That is still likely to pose a significant difficulty, especially if those realms were left unstressed for some time. Which they would have been, from your tales of 'Old Night'. If there were no major galactic powers, that is."

Before Lantrane could reply, the barge screeched to a halt. It took a microsecond longer than it should have for Lantrane to realize why.

A man, an adept of the Mechanicum, was standing before them. He looked almost baseline human, if one could ignore the fact that he had no less than ten arms instead of two. He wore a work robe, and his hair – with only a few mechatendrils within it – was more truly silver than gray. There were blades in his belt, and he looked like he knew how to use them better than most skitarii. But his stance was not hostile.

"I am Adept Semyon," he said. "Who are you, and what is your purpose here?"

"I am Anrakyr of Pyrrhia," the Overlord replied, "and I desire to take knowledge from the Dragon, and prevent its escape."

"You are not lying," Semyon said, "and… any allies will do, I suppose. Come with me. I am the Guardian of the Dragon, and I dread that I will be the last."

He beckoned them off the command barge, and then Lantrane and Anrakyr followed him down, through metallic caverns that were barely recognizable as having, once, been simple service corridors.

"Anrakyr," he said. "You seem to be aware of what the Dragon is, but then you also know that it will not be cooperative."

"If it will not, then I will kill it," the Overlord said. "It is a mere shard. And I do have information of my own to offer it, if necessary."

Semyon looked unsure, at that.

"I was being serious," Anrakyr said, "about helping your defenses. They were hastily erected, and though I cannot help long, my race's technology is superior to yours."

"They were hastily erected, yes, because Kelbor-Hal would not have allowed any to pass here in the Order's service. There was no need for severe defenses."

"A risk like this deserved extreme defenses regardless," Anrakyr observed. "But the trap will defend itself, better than much of what your people could achieve anyhow."

"Well," Semyon stated, "I can't… I won't refuse your aid. Thank you. And as for you, Magos Lantrane?"

"I was Anrakyr's guide through the tunnels of Mars." Lantrane focused her gaze on Anrakyr. "Anrakyr, may I accompany you into the Dragon's haven? Take whatever precautions you deem necessary. I only want to see this fragment of malevolent power. And I have nowhere else to go, anyhow. Wrought Axis has fallen to the Iron Hands."

"So be it," Anrakyr stated.

Semyon looked somewhat flabbergasted, but chose not to argue with the ancient machine. "In… that case, follow me. Preferably on foot."

Lantrane dismounted, and Anrakyr followed, after directing his barge to park itself in place. The hovercraft attached itself to the tunnel floor; given her prior awareness of the Necrons' technology, she doubted it was physically possible to dislodge it, at least without destroying it. They followed Semyon's brisk pace through the branching corridors, most of which gently sloped either up or down. It was a labyrinth indeed, reproducing in microscale the terrain of the surface – or something similar, at least.

They walked in silence, and Lantrane again contemplated her three betrayals. Together, they had combined to turn her away from Mars and mankind. And yet she still could not wait to see the Dragon's face (if it had a face), to encounter a being mortals were supposedly not meant to know. It was not, she was forced to admit, a question of whether she had turned to darkness. It was a question of whether she had always been doomed to do just that.

They came to a staircase, a winding helix cut from basaltic rock, and Semyon led them downwards, stepping carefully and occasionally skipping a dilapidated step. The circular wall was carved with intricate murals, perhaps crafted by Semyon himself and his predecessors during their endless vigil.

They descended hundreds of meters into the Martian crust, before at last the stair turned into a flat corridor. Anrakyr gave an appreciative hum.

"The spatial confounders were good enough to fool my sensors," he remarked. "Impressive, for such a young race."

"We aren't _that_ young," Lantrane felt obliged to say. "Thirty thousand years is more than some other galactic powers."

"Not infantile," Anrakyr accepted. "But young."

They walked into a large marble cube, which Semyon's touch caused to slide apart to reveal a narrow second-order tunnel. They passed through that tunnel, and Lantrane was painfully aware of the turrets aimed at the party, stationed throughout the passage. Most of them were thankfully completely inactive, not even in sentry mode.

It was a dark place, barely lit at all by the occasional lamp. It was also almost bereft of metal, unlike most locations on Mars. A bizarre location, by the Red Planet's standards. But perhaps it had to be such, to be a cage for this monster?

Srequi Lantrane did not pretend like she knew; but she chose not to ask, because she doubted Semyon would respond well.

They walked on, through three heavy and unmarked gates. The fourth was carved with binary, warning of doom to the one who entered. It presented a convincing argument for why the Dragon's sanctum was not worth entering – a completely false argument, but a convincing one nonetheless.

Semyon pushed the gates open. They, unlike the previous ones, did not take in his bio-signature. Instead, they were protected by nothing except grandiose claims of destruction that, somehow, understated the true danger of what the vault contained. They merely promised death to everything the owner valued, after all, not to everyone on Mars.

The three metallic humanoids walked across a hall towards the doors at its other end. Their path was convex, as if they were walking along a lying cylinder. Its sides dropped off into a gaping pit.

"Lantrane," Semyon said, "once we pass the door, you will stay with me." He clasped one of her hands in one of his own, quite firmly, to signify. "I have not forgotten your past membership in the Order."

Holding her hand in one of his own right hands, and Anrakyr's in one of his left, Semyon, the Guardian of the Dragon, passed through the final door without opening it, and entered the chamber that held the core of the Dragon.

It was like a primitive world's cathedral, but instead of light reflected through glass, it was filled with darkness reflected through fiber optics. And in the center of the darkness, there stood a vast machine, roughly octahedral in shape, holding within itself a greenish, eldritch light that seeped through the cracks. It was as beautiful as any marvel of technology Lantrane had seen, intricate to the nanoscale and presumably beyond, combining the best of human technology with a slight sliver of xenotech.

"Oh Dragon of Mars," Anrakyr of Pyrrhia said, in a voice far more assured than even the one Lantrane had heard him use previously. "Oh Great Shard of Mag'ladroth. Black hope, soul breather, sun farmer. I will have words with thee."

And the green mist within the massive octahedron spoke in response.

"The human language, slave-rebel-prince?"

"The human language, false-god-shard." Anrakyr had let go of Semyon's hand, and moved to the front of the adepts, holding his halberd at a threatening tilt. "My question is simple. Where is our king?"

"Szarekh," the Dragon of Mars said, and Lantrane shook with the strength of its hate. Her noocables, despite being specifically insulated against the Dragon, were picking up much from the eldritch being.

Why was she still here, standing, learning from the Dragon? Should she not be killing it, running from it, liberating it?

"Szarekh, the Silent King," Anrakyr of Pyrrhia agreed, like an equal. And here, at this intersection, an equal he was, backlit by the green fire of the Dragon, and aflame with cerulean force himself. "Where is he?"

"Very well," the Dragon said, purring like a mechanical feline, "but there shall be a price. A simple one. The female Adept."

Her. Was that what she was, in the end? A price to be paid? She was… strangely accepting of the concept. It was poetically correct. The inhuman's inhuman doom, for tampering with forces beyond her comprehension.

"No," Anrakyr firmly stated. "No more sacrifices."

"That is my price," the Dragon replied. "My only offer."

"Then I shall kill you," Anrakyr said. Lantrane felt a shiver pass through her biological components. Anrakyr's defiance was not for her, it was out of principle, but still it was wrong.

"She will not end," the Dragon stated. "Merely die." A common Mechanicum platitude, said to reassure adepts with the fact that their mechanical components would be recycled. Lantrane was not sure if Anrakyr knew that, but she could not interrupt at a point like this.

"No," Anrakyr said, more furiously than before. "Nevermore. And you _will_ end."

"I would curse you, as the Flayer had."

"You are a mere shard," Anrakyr responded. "You may kill me, but you will not destroy our kind."

"How certain of that are you? And how certain are you that you _can_ kill me? Your weapons are mighty, but no Talismans of Vaul."

Anrakyr was silent.

"You know it will take more than her to free me," the being within the octahedron declared. "A delicacy, nothing more."

"No," Anrakyr repeated, and slowly began to raise his halberd.

"Yes," Srequi Lantrane answered, knowing well that it would be her last word.

She jerked her hand out of Semyon's, running towards the Dragon's prison. Semyon tried to hold his grip firm, but Lantrane's cybernetics were too strong for that. With inhuman speed, she saw from behind as he raised an arm, the tip of a cannon emerging from it. But the Guardian would be too late; any shot would risk hitting the cage. Anrakyr, meanwhile, stepped aside, though he had clearly had the time to make the shot. His facial expression was unchanged and unreadable; Lantrane had no idea what the Overlord thought of her sacrifice.

Probably that it was idiotic. Perhaps even that she was under the Dragon's influence. But she was not, merely certain. She had betrayed everything, every commander, every ideal, except for knowledge. And now, allowing Anrakyr and the Dragon to clash would be a betrayal of that last thing.

She placed her flesh hand into a crack on the Dragon's cage, almost muttering a prayer to the Omnissiah on reflex; and it slid apart, ever so slightly. Green mist poured out, disassembling and transforming her body and mind.

She was Srequi Lantrane of the Wrought Axis. And she would die as Srequi Lantrane of the Wrought Axis, for whatever Anrakyr had planned. An iron dawn, to avoid final dusk.

Her mind focused on that point. An iron dawn, to avoid final dusk. There were drums, she felt. She had never died before, but wondered whether it had always been like this. Eternity stretched out, and she was at the end of it all. The last black holes evaporated, as a world that had never been descended into the void of heat death. Nothing remained.

This was not real. This was not even a past reality. This was merely her mindscape, here at the end.

No. This was not apocalypse, she mind-pushed upon the world around her. This was her end, but the universe's beginning.

And something was reborn. A vast metal sphere, built of nickel protected against proton decay by the energies of hope and fear combined. The radiation that fled those black holes, collected eons of information, entered and swirled, following equations Srequi Lantrane could not quite comprehend. The doctrines of chance assaulted it, trying to break pieces off by ancient law. This was right, the natural order of things. So all things ended –

"No," she said, everywhere and nowhere at once. The end was but one last shadow.

And in her acceptance and refusal, the metal shattered, flying out as iron embers, and igniting as copper stars. Light, physically impossible and physically inevitable, flared across a dark universe for the first time in many trillions of eons.

The universe was alive again. Different, eternal, stripped of weakness and initial power. But it would never know death again. It was death, but it was not the end, and would never be.

Metal multiplied, and she saw its promise. It would multiply, fill the entire universe. Block out the void, replace it with endless crystal. Block out the light.

"No," she said again, with more certainty than before, and the universe shifted again, less willingly, but in rhythm with her dedication. Metal slowed, eroding and being recreated in rhythm. It was a universal-scale orrery, now. A calm and quiet home. Orderly. Safe from all possible dangers. Safe from –

Safe from knowledge, and newness, and identity.

She was Srequi Lantrane, magos of the Martian Mechanicum. She had betrayed everything for knowledge. She would never surrender that final, fatal quest.

"No!" she screamed. To avoid final dusk….

An iron dawn.

Srequi Lantrane of Mars did not open her eyes. She merely began to see through them.

Anrakyr stood before her, holding his halberd as stalwartly ever. Semyon was using four of his ten hands to scratch various parts of his head. And the green mist lit up the room, enough to let her see her reflection on the wall behind Semyon.

She was human once again – or, rather, she was thus at first glance, an adult human woman some would even consider attractive by baseline standards. Except this was only true approximately, in shape. For her skin was now built of the same silvery, flowing metal as Anrakyr's, in every part of her body, not a touch of organic matter remaining within her. She had not regained her humanity, but instead surrendered it completely.

"Overlord Anrakyr," she spoke in Gothic, though it seemed strange and half-forgotten to form the words. "This is how the Necrontyr concluded?"

"How we leaders were," Anrakyr stated. "I am not sure if your retaining your mind was the shard's intention; but you should have Szarekh's location in your memory."

"This… doesn't feel so terrible," Lantrane remarked. "Stronger, more intelligent, still sapient…. But there is something… absent?"

"There is," Anrakyr said, as he motioned Lantrane and Semyon to leave. "Your soul."


	19. Chapter Thirteen

Durak Rask fired the lascannon off his shoulder, the shot hammering into an Iron Hand Cerberus tank. Said tank appeared unaffected, but Rask risked aiming the next shot at a location where schematics, running through the display on Rask's helmet, suggested a dangerous breach.

It hit, jamming the tank's treads. Next to Rask, Atigrarin and Mnisen Ipharoj discharged their own weapons; the hits were good enough, disabling the tank's primary cannon.

The tank's crew appeared confused; one Iron Hand popped out of the tank, looking for the Death Guard. Ipharoj took the distant shot, and it was true; the Iron Hand sank back into the hatch with a severe head wound. Not immediately lethal, not against a Space Marine, but without immediate attention from an Apothecary it could easily become thus.

Atigrarin was already retreating through the tunnel where the Death Guard had positioned themselves, and Rask followed him alongside Ipharoj. The two tanks to the Cerberus's side – Rask could not immediately discern their pattern, as they had been heavily modified – fired at them, but they lacked a clear shot. One did ensure the collapse of an arch, crushing a blasting station in the abandoned complex, along with the data within. Yet another piece of industry, and perhaps of knowledge, lost.

It was the sort of thing that would irritate the tech-priests, and for that reason alone Rask had trained himself to notice it. At the moment, it would be frustrating for the Iron Hands alone.

The three Death Guard retreated from their sally, footsteps muffled on the inevitably metallic floor. The tunnels evolved into a maze, albeit not a particularly complicated one, by Rask's standards. At the fourth intersection, Omserg Rayubll and Zawarar Zawarco stood at the ready, Rayubll nursing a charred arm.

"This way of war is… unusual," Rayubll remarked.

"Unusual, yes," Rask admitted. "A defensive siege is far from Legion norm. But fighting a defensive war at all is far from Legion norm, even Crusade norm. And on a planet as full of power as Mars, with the odds against us as much as they are, we must utilize every advantage we have – and intuition, and through it unpredictability, is among the greatest of those. Thus, for instance, the tech-priests' success against mechanical Iron Hand strategies before Ferrus Manus's more creative mind took the reins of the campaign. The tech-priests had more computing power, and while both sides were using the same tactics, the tech-priests came out ahead despite their disadvantage in firepower."

Rayubll nodded, with a bit of difficulty.

"Five minutes to the apothecarion," Rask said. "Let's go."

His squad needed no further urging. They trod, with rapid intent, the path back to the Magma City.

Back to the forge they were here to protect, against hopeless odds. So far, the Iron Hands had not truly tested its defenses, concentrating on crushing the Order of the Dragon. This bought vast amounts of valuable time, but such a cornucopia was finite, indeed already ending. The first assault was coming, today.

Wernitian had already evacuated, as had the Fabricator-General. They had lacked a good reason to stay, having given over command of the siege of the Magma City to Rask. Koriel Zeth, however, _had_ stayed. She was organizing the evacuation, endlessly optimizing and re-optimizing paths of saving knowledge, providing an inspirational presence to the tech-priests when it was necessary, and advising Rask on the siege. She did not fight on the front lines, although from the one time she did, Rask concluded that her augmentations made her approximately equal to an Astarte in close combat; her logistical position was more important.

And she had concluded that Rask and his Death Guard would be sufficient to save the Magma City from today's offensive. Rask was not entirely sure that this was the case, although it seemed likely; the Iron Hands were not to be underestimated. For all their mechanical grafts, at the core they were Astartes.

Rask had lost almost three dozen of his men over the weeks of ceaseless fighting, nearly half of that in the single operation consisting of rescuing Kane and his men. One dead from his own squad – Min Vojjomer, a recent recruit who had nevertheless possessed the makings of an excellent strategist, with the potential to rise to officer status in a decade or two.

Not that early death was unusual for Astartes. Rask's concern was more out of uncertainty that anything would be left of the Legion as a whole, in a decade or two.

No. Mortarion remained, Mortarion led the Legion, and he would never allow true disaster to come to it. Rask had no need to worry about events above him. All that mattered was Mars.

The five Death Guard came into the Magma City through one of the tunnels. Those paths were constantly and randomly being modified by Zeth, attempting to ensure any intelligence on back entrances into the Magma City would be outdated within a day. When the ring of Iron Hands would close around the forge more tightly, the tunnels would simply be collapsed, as best as possible; but for now, they allowed a means of communication with Mars outside.

Not that there was much to communicate with, on Mars outside. But sallies, salvage operations, and the like retained their importance.

"Zawarco," Rask ordered as they crossed a threshold into the Magma City proper, "accompany Rayubll to the Apothecarion. Brothers Ipharoj and Atigrarin, come with me."

Zawarco grunted, and the group split. Ipharoj and Atigrarin flanked Rask as he ascended the Magma City's catwalks, passing by the lava lake itself. They walked past marvelous monuments to human industry without comment. Rask, at least, had grown used to them. Indeed, he could by now tell the saddened, weakened state of the machinery that the siege had induced. But for all of that, Magma City remained impressive, especially for one who had spent most of his life fighting on barely civilized planets.

Yes, Magma City remained impressive – even here, at its dusk.

"Commander, the Iron Hands are approaching weapons range," Lgalun voxed to Rask.

"I'll be at the command post within the minute," the Master of Ordnance responded, even as he finished ascending the last staircase and entered the room occupying the uppermost position on the Magma City's walls.

Countless displays, physical and projected, with knobs and buttons of all sorts. Rask had put days into understanding the details of the post, but he was fairly certain the time had not been wasted. An Adept, of course, would have put a number on that; Rask did not need to. Koriel Zeth stood ready, as did Zecusor Falenatak, Lgalun being on the complex's other side. Zeth and Falenatak both greeted Rask with small, efficient gestures before returning to coordinating their sections of the battlefield.

Rask took the scene in instantaneously. The Iron Hands were charging, tanks and Astartes and everything else, at a flaw in the walls. The shield had been weakened, and had no chance of holding the Tenth Legion off.

But it was enough to delay the Iron Hands, and easily thus. Responding shots from the Magma City hammered into the Iron Hand formation, even as it gathered in front of the shield. It would take long minutes before they broke through, and a retreat was already appearing more likely –

A flash, and the shield was gone.

The command post shook with the rest of Magma City as round after round, no longer blocked, punched without regard for accuracy into the complex's walls. Zeth seemed to freeze, recalculating the situation; Falenatak did not, and neither did Rask. The defenders still had the advantage; Rask ordered a servitor task force to slow the Iron Hands down, Sofev's and Riolasa's squads with them. Shortly before battle was joined, three land mines went off.

Rask's hands were itching for a trigger or a sword. Glancing to his left, he recognized Zeth had recovered; with that in mind, he dashed to the firing slit and fired three shells into the Iron Hands' midst, before returning to management.

"Readings bizarre," Falenatak observed. "They're using sorcery!"

"Warp anomalies – of course…" Zeth muttered in Gothic. She was likely unleashing a far more detailed tirade in binary.

The infantry ran into the Iron Hands, and that was when the Iron Hands' infantry began to change. Hands turned to claws, titanic horns sprouting from hands. Spikes emerged from every conceivable position on the Iron Hands' bodies.

By all rights, this mutation should have disoriented the Iron Hands. Of course, it wouldn't. Sorcery was a unique form of affront to existence. Truly, they were imitating the tyrants….

But Durak Rask was no longer a useless child. He was a guardian of death, a son of Mortarion. And there had been a third squad among the infantry. A useless squad, once, having lost its focus – but not its will.

Sergeant Mineceno screamed benedictions to order itself, to Barbarus and resistance, to Mortarion and resilience, and to all that was right in the world. His battle-cries were audible, even over the cannonfire, from Rask's command post. They had been the ravings of a madman, not so long ago. But Rask had found the right words, and Mineceno was now a fanatic, not a weakness.

And Sofev's and Riolasa's squads, shockingly, followed him. They regrouped around him, blades shining in the early, blue Martian dusk.

They had attacked at dusk. Rask had not fully registered that before, somehow. They had attacked at dusk; and now they were paying the price. To sorcery-addled minds, the tricks of the light that the Fourteenth embraced became only more severe. The Iron Hands' bodies were as strong as ever, but their minds were distracted.

And, even as Magma City continued to shake, the Death Guard continued to kill.

Rask did not fire, now. He did not need to. Tanks went up in smoke, artillery toppled, and demon-Astartes were rent apart by their cousins. Sofev's and Riolasa's squads were beginning a gradual retreat, for Rask knew well that – given time – the Iron Hands would regroup. They still had a real numerical advantage, and were Astartes. They had not despaired, either, even slightly; their mechanical components made sure of as much. The only reason that they were reeling was that Mineceno's devoted desperation was unexpectedly effective against their sorcery.

But, before the Iron Hands could indeed regroup, the hammer fell. Sostoar's squad had arrived on the Red Planet without tanks, intended to fight as infantry; but if there was anything the fourth world of Sol was not lacking in, now, it was tanks. Many had been broken, but Magma City possessed excellent repair facilities.

Sostoar's squad charged in, one Astarte a tank (the rest of the crew was servitors, whom the Death Guard had extensively trained with beforehand, giving at least some semblance of coordination). The Iron Hands did not run, but their movements were instants slower, now. They no longer outnumbered the Death Guard, and their flesh recognized that the assault was lost with no true retreat plan.

Magma City's guns fell quiet, all at once, when no Iron Hands were still standing. It took two more minutes for the last of them to stop breathing.

The battlefield was far from silent.

Distant guns and orbital bays deployed ruinous cargo into the forge complex's heart. The shield remained down, after all. Rask glanced at Zeth with a side of worry; if the shield was not restored, an immediate evacuation would be necessary.

The assault had been fought back, but the war for Mars would still be lost – and, quite possibly, lost far sooner than Rask had expected. Mineceno's squad had suffered, too, as had Sofev's; Riolasa's, equipped with the best gear, had suffered the least but had still suffered four down. The servitors were almost all wrecked. And yet the Iron Hands had suffered far, far worse.

"It's rebooting already," Zeth said with a neutral expression, and Rask smiled. "Production will be damaged, but I've fixed the security vulnerabilities. If this had happened in a larger assault, Magma City would have fallen."

Rask nodded. The assault was not one he would have described as small, but it was somewhat unpracticed, to his eye. And rushed – very much rushed. It seemed as if the Iron Hand leader had perhaps charged forward for political reasons, and underestimated the defending Astartes in the process. Politics, in the Tenth Legion, had generally been simple, but that was not to say toothless, and Rask did not know what feud had grown this time.

It did not matter, not particularly. The Alpha Legion or Raven Guard would have exploited the division in the Iron Hands to their benefit, in Rask's place; but then, they would not have still been here, to be aware of it. The victory had been a closer thing than it could have appeared; as the force shield shimmered into existence into Magma City, Rask allowed himself a glance back onto his Legion's ideals.

They had won today by the true measure of perfection. The artists of the Emperor's Children saw perfection as accomplished on the strategic level; but no plan could be perfect against a competent enemy. In the Great Crusade the Legions had steamrolled their enemies, only a minority of which qualified as competent. This war of cousins would not be like that.

There would be destruction, and attrition, but there would also be ever a place for individual brilliance. Perfection was not a goal, it was a method; it was not practiced, though training was of course essential, but done. And his Death Guard, both those on the front line and those manning the walls, had used that method to the end of destroying evil. The Iron Hands had embraced tyranny, and sorcery, and most everything that the Fourteenth stood against. And yet they had not eliminated weakness, by eliminating flesh.

For in a world of iron, where instinct was half-forgotten but still unfaded, flesh was not weakness. It was strength.


	20. Chapter Fourteen

The forces of the Order of the Dragon had been bled dry, in the sludge rivers of the Iapygian Sink and the chaoses of eastern Valles Marineris. They had lost countless servitors, skitarii, and pieces of machinery. Now they charged into the canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, barely outnumbering the Iron Hands, having given up nearly every other stronghold on Mars.

But Ferrus Manus knew that the war for Mars was far from won. For the Dragon was a lie, but not a fiction.

Column upon column of Titans and superheavy tanks were moving into the narrow valleys, bringing down much of the terrain as they walked or rode. There were other contraptions, too, bizarre and without known weaknesses. Such experimental designs were, of course, likely to have twice as many unknown ones.

Ferrus would leave the mop-up to his Legion, if Noctis Labyrinthus stood. The only potentially problematic fortress was the Magma City, defended by rebel Death Guard. There was a mystery there, some unknown method of interstellar transport, but it was unlikely to be retrievable, post-siege. Infiltrators would have a better chance; he'd discussed the possibility with the few loyal tech-priests, albeit they had in the main resisted, claiming infeasibility. But nothing in Magma City could compare to the Dragon's danger.

Semyon was next to incommunicado, but had at least assured Ferrus that he was still loyal, merely retreating again to the realm of far legend. It was quite suboptimal timing. The defense around the Dragon's tomb was under the command of Iron Father Sabik Wayland, with Iron Fathers Uninum and Dolgerigh taking up identical positions around two decoys. The rest of the Iron Hands were deployed around the Labyrinth, in positions that maximized mobility. It was an arrangement designed to take the Order's assault apart, and to capitalize on their single-mindedness, leaving no opportunity for retreat. Nothing would remain of the Order's army.

"But," Gabriel Santar said, "your chase for total victory will only open the door for a total loss."

Ferrus didn't even twitch at the hallucination. It had remained remarkably consistent, though it usually talked more about the incipient schism with Branthan's Ethereal Hands than the war itself. The schism, however, was no small problem in its own right. The Dragon – Ferrus was not genuinely sure, even, whether the Order was capable of releasing it. But then again, it was more likely, on past experience, that he was being insufficiently rather than excessively paranoid.

He could have set up a greater defensive perimeter, devoted more forces to preventing a breakthrough, but he had judged that possibility remote enough with the current setup. Now, standing on a rocky pinnacle towards the upper part of the Labyrinth and gazing upon the first shots, far below, Ferrus Manus wondered whether he should have been more cautious.

The distant sky, to a human eye, was simply the red of the pristine Martian soil. Ferrus saw in detail the fires rising from multicolored forge complexes, markings of battle. In reality, projectiles creating fire were only a small part of the destructive forces the sides were hurling at one another, albeit the most visible one.

A large detachment of Clan Avernii, the Morlocks, surrounded Ferrus's clifftop watch. They stood silent, but ever at the ready to follow him into the heat of war. Ranu Urgdosev, the leader of this detachment, handed his Primarch a data-slate, and Ferrus glanced at it. It described an experimental Mechanicum crawler, dubbed the Vanadium class by the Iron Hands, which the Order was using in large numbers. Ferrus assimilated the information in seconds and looked back at the horizon, where battle was drawing ever closer to him.

In fact, it was drawing closer too fast. The Order tanks' speed was impossible, especially given that many of their models had specifications already known to the Iron Hands. But, regardless, each tank was dashing through the maze at half again, or more, the speed it was designed for.

"The Order has redesigned their tanks for speed," Ferrus voxed to the relevant part of the Legion. "Assume all speeds to be approximately doubled." Many were more than that, some less, but without more of an inkling about the mechanism Ferrus could not know for sure.

The enemy front, dashing forward, was far from constant. Indeed, Ferrus saw that the tanks that had been most sped up were concentrated in a few spearheads. One was approaching his position, by now, and he ordered the Morlocks to begin descent. For himself, he gazed at the traitors' army for several more seconds before understanding. It was bizarre, by non-Warp physics, but not technically impossible even in that regime. The Vanadiums, somehow, were more than fast themselves. They sped up the tanks, and even the Titans, around them. It was almost a segregated fast-time field, albeit a mild one. The actual mechanism was not obvious, but Ferrus had to respect the invention. He appended those conclusions to the Vanadiums' dossier, recalling that this capability had never been shown before.

And then, as he began to contemplate redeployment, a Vanadium-led formation drove into the waiting Morlocks. Urgdosev's Astartes unleashed a minor firestorm, even as mines took out the two leading tanks; but the Vanadium itself was unharmed, having hung back.

Ferrus did not hesitate, as the Morlocks began to assault the tanks. In battle, there was no time for contemplation; and it was long since time for him to enter battle.

He leapt down from the cliff, diving directly into the Vanadium in a blast of shrapnel. He tore its central cogitator apart with his silver hands, servitors tiny compared to him firing uselessly and inaccurately. And then, and only then, he unlatched _Fireblade_ from his side and pointed it at the servitors.

The servitors froze, their flesh unable to deny a Primarch's aura. It would only have been several seconds before their mechanical components would have pulled them into a lumber again, but with two strokes of the sword Fulgrim had forged him, all five of the mechanical homunculi died. Ferrus spared a glance for the strange add-ons on the engine, which he assumed were responsible for the speed increase, before sweeping his gaze around the battlefield. The Morlocks held, as he had known they would, and so Ferrus turned to face the Order's column once again.

That was when the next tank fired at him.

It was a close shot, not enough to completely destroy Ferrus's shoulder armor but enough to make him bleed. Ferrus skidded a few centimeters back, bracing, before the tank drove directly into the Primarch. Ferrus lowered his arms and, gunfire pitting his armor, raised the tank's front end and sending it into the air, flipping it into the following one. They collided, creating an adamantium plug that entirely blocked the passage.

Another tank, its speed still augmented by the remnants of the Vanadium's field, lost control and slammed into the roadblock. Further behind, the back half of the column crawled to a controlled stop. A number of them began firing into the rock, trying to excavate a tunnel around the charred metal in front of them; curiously, none tried to turn around. That was what Ferrus would have done, in their place, because the slower path would avoid engagement with a supported Primarch. Their road to victory was – but no, that was only a road to Ferrus's defeat. To actually win, they would need to attack the Primarch. Or, was this simply a matter of fanaticism, of thinking that the miniscule chance of getting through Ferrus was preferable to the certainty of arriving to the Dragon's lair late, if at all?

It was hard to tell, but as the Morlocks walked up behind him, Ferrus realized that it did not matter. His course was the same either way. He turned to face his sons.

"Squads Buahaan, Tadhesfaw – hold the slopes. Everyone else, with me! For the Emperor! The flesh is weak!"

"The flesh is weak!" the Morlocks echoed. Urgdosev himself was second onto the barricade, barely behind Ferrus himself. The Astartes breached the roadblock and leapt, from above, after their Primarch onto the tanks below. Bolter shots rang out, as did the sound of hammers meeting plate.

The Order's tanks had been trapped, and now the Iron Hands swept them away. Ferrus Manus tracked every Morlock's position as they fell onto the Order of the Dragon, but the majority of his focus remained in front of him. After wrenching a cannon off a modified Valdor, he sheathed his sword and used it as a massive club, gradually crumpling it as he continued forward, dodging regular shots. It created an illusion of savagery, which he was only happy to encourage. To distant observers, Astartes were often seen as techno-barbarians. Whether that was true depended on one's definition of barbarism.

Behind him, the din of battle continued. By now, despite their obsession, some of the rear tanks were beginning to calculate their doom. Only Urgdosev's squad had kept up with Ferrus, but that was quite enough. Ferrus liked them quite a bit – it was a peculiar combination of strength and weakness, and a young one, but every one of them held promise well above Morlock average.

"For the Emperor!" Urdgosev bellowed, as the squad charged after its Primarch, towards the column's back. Ferrus needed to win here, both the skirmish and the battle, in the most decisive fashion; and then, perhaps, his reputation, and more importantly pride, would somewhat recover. But in this valley, at least, the resistance seemed to be reasonably weak. He hoped that his temporary absence from command, having given over overall direction of the battle to Iron Father Wayland and Captain Sfacay, would not prove a mistake; but both those commanders, he trusted to be capable, and so he focused on the here and now.

Throwing away the cannon's remnants, Ferrus once more unsheathed _Fireblade_ and carved into an unknown tank's engine. It sputtered, leading Ferrus to throw himself to the ground. The explosion duly came, washing over his back; it would have blackened his armor if that had not already been its color.

Several minutes of clashing metal followed, the Iron Hands by now massacring the tech-priests. It brought to mind the original massacre, the oil and blood turning the council room's floor slick. Perhaps that had been suboptimal. Ferrus had always lacked patience, but if the massacre had followed lengthy negotiations, perhaps the resulting rebellion would have been lesser. And while Kelbor-Hal would never have accepted the Emperor's terms, perchance Kane might have?

Most likely, however, it would only have shifted all these events back a few months. Ferrus Manus knew the Mechanicum's factional rivalries fairly well, and he doubted any of the major ideologies would have simply accepted Imperial Chaos. Of course, he'd have bet several planets that the Order of the Dragon would remain an insignificant sect, too. Counterfactuals were difficult like that.

As Urgdosev yanked the last tech-priest out of his tank, and fired several bolter shells into the probable locations of vital organs, Ferrus Manus turned away from the empty canyon and towards his massively armored Morlocks. They stood, black silhouettes in Terminator plate, somewhat scattered, waiting.

They would follow him into hell, or out of it. Most of his Legion would, even now – that much, he had deduced from discussing the situation, without excessive trouble. But an open civil war would still be disastrous. The Iron Hands would fall on their own blade, which – while better than fading into an iron landscape – was a disturbing possibility. And the Coalition they were fighting had Marines and Primarchs of its own, even if the details of which ones remained unclear.

No, he could control the dissent. And therefore he _would_ control it, and keep unity strong. Orth had proven he was invaluable, after all, and motivated by loyalty as well as fear.

The platform lowered itself to ground level, and Ferrus silently stepped onto it, beckoning Urgdosev's squad to ride with him. Then they were rising, the opposite wall drawing away centimeter by centimeter. Dust, gray and red and green, swirled in vortices behind them, glimmering in the cold starlight.

Cables ground their way upward, accelerating, leaving a floor of death and dust and iron far behind. Not, of course, that there was any place on Mars one could escape from those factors.

Not, of course, that Ferrus Manus felt any desire to.

When they were at the command post again, Ferrus glanced around, taking in the physical view before looking at the data. That was sufficient for him to realize things had gone very, very wrong.

The mobile squadrons were successfully hunting the Order, tearing the traitorous tech-priests to shreds. Throughout Noctis Labyrinthus, the Iron Hands were winning by a wide margin.

The only exception to that was the region surrounding the Dragon's lair.

Wayland's guns stood silent, having been trampled by the Order's Titans. Wayland himself, Ferrus saw on a display, had been incinerated by the god-machines' guns. And, within minutes, the Order of the Dragon would roll into their dark god's tomb, unopposed by anyone but Semyon, whose defenses – last Ferrus had seen them – were frankly mediocre.

"Sfacay," Ferrus said, with a solar-temperature voice. "What happened?"

"Wayland fell," Sfacay responded by the same private channel. "I redeployed forces to emphasize, as you commanded, the psychological devastation of the Order."

"I commanded they be prevented from reaching the tomb!"

"But my lord, you said to ignore the lie of the Dragon, so… why does it matter?"

Ferrus Manus turned off the vox and let loose a cry of frustration and fear into the night sky. The only question, now, was whether it would be Ferrus or the Dragon that would end Sfacay. At this point, Ferrus suspected the latter.

"And you can do nothing, by this point," Gabriel Santar said. "A brilliant strategist indeed."

Ferrus turned to the waiting Urgdosev. "Get Numen's section of the Avernii to reinforce Semyon. If the Guardian survives several minutes, we'll stop the Order."

Urgdosev relayed the order, then turned back to his father. "My lord," he asked through a private channel, "is… is the Dragon real?"

"No," Ferrus lied. "But there are horrors, in those vaults, and they must be contained."

Urgdosev, more reassured than he should have been, signaled affirmation, and Ferrus turned to look at the battle once more. The Order's last battalion marched and rode towards Semyon's fortress, Titans and tanks and infantry united in desperate faith – indeed, in the worst of desperate faiths. They were close, now, on the brink of weapons range.

And then the night was green.

Viridian beams impacted the Order's forces from all sides, a trap of turrets snapping shut. They did not push the heavy machinery away, but rather somehow pulled it towards itself. Squinting, Ferrus considered how the effect may be achieved. It seemed to be a deconstructor beam, pulling materials apart layer by layer; but such weaponry was believed to be effectively impossible, and had never been seen even in xenotech.

Except Semyon, it seemed, had somehow cracked the problem, and with insane efficiency too; and now he stood, personally, ten-armed, on the rocky walls, directing servitors armed with more conventional weaponry into the Order. The turrets continued to fill the canyon with green light, flesh and iron being disassembled identically. The Order focused its fire on the turrets and Semyon himself, but the Guardian of the Dragon had already, singlehandedly, brought down three Titans, and most turrets were still firing.

Semyon was silhouetted against the green glow, and in those moments, Ferrus Manus felt almost as if he was looking at his own father, in early days, or perhaps at the Omnissiah of Mechanicum myth. His gestures, transhuman, were occasionally interrupted by exploding shells, and Ferrus intellectually knew that the Guardian was unlikely to survive. But it did not matter, at this moment.

Titans fell into each other, crucial circuits missing; tank guns misfired, damaged by the deconstructor beams; individual skitarii shot each other in trying to get to Semyon. The Guardian danced on the cliff's edge, a ruinous shadow between stormdrops.

And then Numen's Morlocks charged in, from a side canyon, even as the turrets slowed their fire. The Order was surrounded, now, but asking for no quarter, because they were well aware it was months too late. Black Astartes, against green light, Semyon's turrets avoiding the sons of Medusa; Mechanicum forces painted a thousand shades, mostly blue and silver; and the canyon walls, crimson and gray, rusted both as primordial Mars and as dilapidated industry. Ferrus could no longer see Semyon – had the Guardian fallen? – and the turrets had altogether stopped.

"Turrets have self-destructed," Numen explained by vox. Ferrus nodded; it appeared that Semyon did not want to share his technology. In the aftermath, Ferrus would consider letting him get away with it. If not for the Guardian, they might all have been doomed by now.

And now? Now, from a distant clifftop, Ferrus Manus watched the Order of the Dragon die. They died, trying to unleash a horrendous apocalypse that they, in their eternal quest for knowledge, had embraced in an entirely false way. They died, as fanatical devotees to unreality, while thinking they were princes of rationalism. They died, pathetically, and weakly despite all of their metal. Indeed, they provided an excellent example of why metal was not necessarily any stronger than flesh.

But – and this Ferrus Manus had to accept, with, perhaps, a twinge of jealousy – they died standing, without doubt, and having after choosing their path never knelt again, to anyone.


	21. Interlude: Iron

Sabik Wayland, former Iron Father of the Iron Hands Legion, stood armorless in the rune-inscribed chamber, looking on the shattered body of Guardian Semyon.

"I won't survive this," Semyon stated, confirming what Wayland had suspected. "I'm held conscious by short-acting chemicals, right now. Still, I believe even you Astartes would consider that a worthy end."

"Most certainly," Wayland said, bowing his head. "Primarchs have had dimmer falls."

"We won after all," Semyon said with a chuckle that was most unlike him. "The Dragon remains imprisoned. And I have a few secrets to pass on, before omega point."

"A data wafer?" Wayland was curious, despite everything. Despite his place in the Legion being lost, as part of Semyon's grand plan.

He suspected Ferrus Manus might, if plots were optimally executed, welcome him back, if he knew that Wayland had pretended to die in order to aid Semyon's defense. Only he did not quite want to go back to the Legion. It had changed, the last year, mutated into something altogether different. He did not want to betray his Primarch and his Emperor, but Chaos was more madness than progress. It had twisted Branthan and his Ethereal Hands, and though Ferrus was attempting to keep a lid on it, Wayland doubted even the Primarch could manage such a deed. He was not even sure of the Emperor.

There was a different hue to everything the Legion had done since embracing religion, and it was not a hue Wayland could quite define. Perhaps that was why he could not accept it, either. Others did not have the same problem; perhaps he had joined Semyon because the Guardian, despite everything, did.

"Speech first," the Guardian said, still smiling. "There are data where archiving would have been an excessive risk."

Wayland nodded. He supposed he was to pass the data on to the next Guardian, whoever they were.

"Declaration: The Dragon is half of a god," Semyon said, switching to the binary language of Mars, a more efficient language than Gothic. "Explanation: Long ago, a few-numbered race of extremely powerful xenos, who fed on vast quantities of energy, were broken into pieces after losing a war. Fear: If they were to reunite, each might be no weaker than the Emperor."

"Query: Why were those xenos not simply destroyed?"

"Confusion: I had assumed it was impossible, but some information indicates it is feasible. Hypothesis: Destroying a xenos or shard might lead to unknown, severe consequences."

"Comprehension."

"Explanation: The Dragon is the most powerful of its parent xeno's shards, and was imprisoned here by the Emperor. Declaration: The Order was correct in that it assisted Martian technical progress, but not in why. Explanation: The Dragon is malevolent, and seeks to be freed."

"Comprehension." All of that seemed, thus far, fairly intuitive.

"Curse: The Dragon is not the only shard of its parent xeno. Explanation: The silver arms of your gene-father are another, weaker shard. Fear: If Ferrus Manus's mind is weak, the shard will seek to possess Ferrus's mind."

"Comprehension," Wayland said, though he was far from it.

Ferrus's arms – Asirnoth – that had been but another shard. One that would seek to reunite with the Dragon of Mars, perhaps. One that desired to kill his gene-father and take his body, just like the forces of Chaos. Ferrus was doomed twice over.

"Intent: We must warn Ferrus."

"Disagreement: We must not. Explanation: If Ferrus even suspects, his resolve will be lost, and his loss more certain and earlier."

"Affirmative." There was no escape for Ferrus. Just as there was none for Wayland. The truth was a heavy burden, sometimes, but it had never weighed on Wayland quite like this.

Because, he knew, despite all of what Semyon had said, that Chaos was an even greater threat than the Dragon to his Primarch's mind.

"Declaration: The Dragon is not the darkest secret in the heart of Mars," Semyon continued. "Explanation: Some things, I dare not say, and you must discover for yourself."

With those words, something finally combined. "Query: Do you intend me to be the next Guardian of the Dragon?"

"Affirmative," Semyon answered. "Explanation: I needed a transhuman not loyal to the Order or to Chaos, with sufficient intelligence and lore. Hope: This data wafer should now be enough to begin, plugged into yourself."

Wayland took the wafer from Semyon's trembling mechatendril.

"Memory: I was the Guardian of the Dragon for over three millennia," Semyon said, a bit of white noise seeping into his statements. "Hope: You may well surpass my tenure, if Mars survives long enough. Recommendation: Do not reveal any of this to anyone, of course, and position yourself simply as the new Guardian. Explanation: With the resources of my forge, it will not be overly difficult to turn enough of yourself into iron to prevent Ferrus identifying you."

"Comprehension." That, Wayland would do eagerly.

It was a final turn away from his Primarch and Legion, of course, but he had a greater duty now. And duty was what being an Astarte was about, was it not?

Sabik Wayland plugged the wafer into his shoulder, and all at once, he understood the layout of the complex, and a million linked, tiny secrets of Noctis Labyrinthus. Primed by Semyon's speech, he saw many of those details in an utterly different light, a deeper and brighter layer of what the Grand Lie of Mars, and other Labyrinthine secrets, truly were.

A mere data wafer could do this. Truly, this place was a wonder, a relic of the Golden Age of Technology.

And it was being left to him, because there was no one else.

Semyon smiled wider, and Wayland could even hear the ragged mechanical breathing.

"Greeting: Welcome… to… Noctis Labirynthus," Adept Semyon stated, "Guardian of the Dragon."


	22. Chapter Fifteen

Cadmus Qevpilum looked at the grim, spiraling peak of the Magma City, rising from the volcanic shield of Arsta Mons. Despite helical patterns, on the whole it was a cylindrical wall, with irregular and complex structures within a heavily fortified enclosure (which, according to Qevpilum's plans, itself hung over a lava lake). Artillery from within its shield lobbed shells towards the attackers, but lazily; the defenders were short on ammunition, and the forge had sustained significant damage throughout the siege, especially from Ulirrben's failed assault.

In response, Qevpilum's own cannons, tank-mounted and otherwise, rained fury on the Magma City. Most impacts were absorbed by the shield, but enough came through to render the rebel forge a thoroughly inhospitable place. In time, the shield would fall, and a full assault would be mounted; until then, any direct attack would share the same fate as the previous one.

Ulirrben…. The Captain of Clan Evaeseph, the 49th Company of the Iron Hands, had fallen on the front lines of his charge, leaving the siege to be transferred to Qevpilum's command. Some would rage at Ulirrben for his failure, but after a briefing about the situation, Qevpilum understood why the late captain had acted as he had. Magma City was highly desirable to take intact, and its defenders likely had archaeotech that allowed a retreat in certain cases, preparation presumably being helpful in that task. Besides, those defenders were Astartes. So he had gambled, and gambled unwisely.

No, it was the Death Guard that concerned Qevpilum. Space Marines turning against the Imperium was a concept unheard of and inconceivable. Primarchs turning against the Imperium – and Qevpilum was well-aware that those were precisely the rumors percolating through the Legion – was far, far worse.

And though Magma City did not hold a Primarch, it wasn't as if Qevpilum had Ferrus Manus available either. This was a lesser battle, compared to the clashes that would singlehandedly decide galactic fates, but it was still likely to be one of the greatest conflicts in Qevpilum's life.

It was wise, of course, to approach such a battle with caution. But Qevpilum's hesitation was also born of the memory of Pyrrhia, and of the schism that had been revealed to him as soon as he had landed on Mars. He was off-center, right now, capable of thinking strategically but not in optimal condition for hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps mechanical attachments were capable of fixing that, but though the Grand Cogitator had not permanently damaged Zerondem's mind, Qevpilum retained a firm skepticism towards so severely altering one's brain. A touch of stabilizing iron was quite enough.

And so, instead of staying in the Apothecarium and undergoing cerebral surgeries, he was standing near the base of Magma City's shield, protected by a scattering of rocks, and looking at a town of heresy.

"Brother-Centurion," Venth Zerondem said, walking up beside Qevpilum. "I've received the answer – no second attempt at infiltration is sanctioned."

"Good," Qevpilum said, still wondering about the treasures held within Magma City. "So the spies will finally stop trying to interfere?"

"Indeed," said a voice that Qevpilum had to turn to confirm. It was the newly promoted Sergeant Amax Hierrth, standing adjacent to Zerondem. "Biresteon's team has been confirmed dead, and they don't want to keep throwing their men at the problem, at least until they know what went wrong."

"And when they do?" Qevpilum clarified, still not entirely focused on the conversation. Magma City could hold wonders, it was true – or, like Pyrrhia, it could hold horrors. Who knew what forces the Death Guard had invoked, that they believed they could stand against the Emperor's wrath?

"They've cut all personnel and funding from the mission," Zerondem clarified. "And any outside investigation will take months. They've cut their losses, and left us to do our work."

Qevpilum nodded. It would have been nice to actually know what was inside the forge, but the tech-priest spies had effectively stalled the siege for the past week. Only now could Qevpilum actually direct munitions towards places where they could effectively bring down the shield, with minimal damage to recoverable assets, instead of focusing on clearing tunnels and avoiding Biresteon's team. Which had probably been turned into servitors, by now, or else just disassembled for scraps, despite the Spearhead-Centurion's best attempts to help.

"Understood," Qevpilum said. "Hierrth, convey my gratitude to whoever approved this. Or denied it, rather."

The sergeant nodded and left. Zerondem stayed; Qevpilum looked at his uncertain face from the corner of his eye.

"What is it, brother?"

"Brother-Centurion," Zerondem said, less certainly than his previous speech but not by much, "I intend to submit a request to join the Iron Father corps."

Qevpilum blinked. He had not expected that. It did make sense, of course – Zerondem was brilliantly logical, and inspiring when he tried. He was precisely the sort of person Qevpilum would have liked to see as an Iron Father, and although he despised the quasi-religious approach to technology many of them shared (the only avatar of true divinity being the Emperor), Zerondem could work with it even as he tried to displace it. Perhaps, in time, he would even succeed, and the Iron Fathers would stop trying to imitate Chaplains.

Besides, Hemcasi was Qevpilum's designated successor, and though Zerondem was not intensely ambitious, he deserved a more independent post.

"You have my blessing," Qevpilum said. "Nusaamnius will take your place as lieutenant, after you are accepted. Which you will be, despite the politics. How does the training section on Mars function, in the current… situation?"

"There are loyal tech-priests," Zerondem explained, "and the senior Iron Fathers will take a larger role in training. An expansion is necessary in any case, because of the diminished future role of Mars itself."

"Sensible," Qevpilum agreed. "Primarch's order?"

"Or something similar."

"Good. Brother, I wish you the best of luck; you are the sort of Iron Father we need more of. Do not forget that you are an Iron Hand above all; and, of course, do not even contemplate sinking into superstition like so many Iron Fathers have. You, and those like you, might yet have a significant chance of restoring the corps away from them; and you are closer to the ideal Iron Father profile than almost anyone in the battalion. Fire and Iron, brother."

"Fire and Iron," Zerondem replied, as a shell boomed nearby.

Zerondem walked away, and Qevpilum was left alone before the siege. The centurion did not feel particular regret, for Zerondem would find his place yet. And yet there was some… nostalgia, perhaps. He recalled a time when he had himself been in Zerondem's position, and concerned himself with finding his place, more than finding others'. He had passed that phase as a young sergeant, though – or had he?

At times like this, and doubly so with Pyrrhia still echoing, Cadmus Qevpilum tended to contemplate destruction. He knew, of course, that the devastation sometimes left by the Great Crusade was necessary. Often, what was lost was obsolete anyhow; they were not Thousand Sons, to archive false paths. Even more often, it was tainted by xenos or hateful men. But even when, as today on Mars, neither was the case, the shock wave of truth was sometimes deadly.

What bothered Qevpilum had more to do with inefficiency. How did they know that they were incapable of doing better? Did even the Emperor, in finally turning the Imperium religious, have any certainty that today was a better day for such a shift than a year earlier, or three years later?

Those thoughts were somewhat blasphemous, of course, but with Primarchs rebelling Qevpilum doubted his own path would much concern the god of mankind.

A movement in the corner of his viewfield caught Qevpilum's eye, and he turned his gaze to the parapet, behind which a decorated Death Guard had come up to survey the battle. Qevpilum focused his enhanced vision on his figure –

And he froze, as he recognized the warrior.

Cadmus Qevpilum had first fought alongside Durak Rask in the ice towers of Valenitr, both saving the other's life in the process. They had been brothers, in the aftermath, and had fought alongside each other several more times along the course of the Crusade. Rask was among the few who understood, perhaps even as much as Qevpilum did, the raging melody of fire and iron, the pounding of artillery and the mechanistic arts.

And so, it had been Rask that had been sent to defend Magma City against the forces of the Imperium. Qevpilum supposed he should have known that Rask would follow his Primarch into rebellion, if that was where Mortarion went. Rask's love of his Primarch had always been severe. But for all that rumors talked about a war of brothers, this was the first time Qevpilum had felt the concept in truth. And – if this was how it weighed on him, how bad was it for Ferrus Manus?

"Durak," Qevpilum voxed along the private channel, standing up by half-forgotten instinct. Perhaps he could understand – not for intel, though he supposed he could couch it in such terms, but simply for knowledge.

"Cadmus," Durak Rask answered from the wall of Magma City, locating his now-foe with his eyes. Either could decide to fire, now, try to decapitate the enemy in a firestorm. Neither did, of course. "Why?"

Qevpilum's mind spun, somewhat, from the question, because it was the precise question he had intended to ask his friend. "Because I am loyal," he eventually said. "Because I fight for the Imperium, and that has not changed. It is you that I should be asking – why? Why betray the Great Crusade and everything we fought for?"

"I follow Mortarion," Rask said, "as always. And I fight against tyranny, as I always have. Against blind religion, and against those that would order planets destroyed for one false word, and against darkest sorcery. Against unnecessary atrocity, in sum. We have done enough damage as it is, in the Crusade, when it was to unite humanity against greater threats. Now, your loyal Legions battle for the Emperor – but against every idea of the Imperium."

"We fight for progress!" Qevpilum exclaimed. "As we always have. Perhaps some have taken the destruction too far, yes. The Twelfth and Eighth in particular have always had such a tendency. But our cause is to lift the human race to new heights. Our warpcraft is merely another frontier of science. And religion – you know well the majesty of Primarchs, Rask. And the Emperor is as far above them as our fathers are above us. What is he, if not a god?"

"A tyrant," Rask quietly said. "A monster. The sort of being we fought on Crusade, but with more power by orders of magnitude. But the worth of leaders is not primarily determined by power."

Qevpilum's head was shaking, even more, from incomprehension. He had expected the loyalty to Mortarion, perhaps, but certainly not the devotion and conviction. The Primarchs were rebelling in a moment of convenient weakness, not simply because they were misguided – right? They were beyond such errors, after all. Or should have been, at least.

But Qevpilum allowed, too, a glimmer of hope. Perhaps his friend could yet be convinced to negotiate.

"We're all monsters, of a certain type," Qevpilum said. "We're all soldiers, after all."

"But that can only be redeemed by fighting for ideals. For something more important than the lives we end. And a single being, no matter how wise or strong, cannot be that."

"We fought for the future," Qevpilum explained. "For a new golden age. _That_ was my ideal. And your rebellion is likely to break the Imperium, to at most shatter humanity back into Old Night. To counter the Crusade."

"And that is better than the Emperor's tyranny would be," Rask insisted.

"And what was before, that was not tyranny, then? We burned worlds too, and your Legion especially has often been accused of atrocity." They were arguing in circles, it felt like.

"We killed when necessary," Rask said, "like any Legion. But the Emperor's rule, on worlds already integrated – such as Mars – was always an understanding one. And now, he has lost his last connections to the people he rules, and fallen back on godhood."

"And the rule of anarchy, will that be preferable?" Qevpilum asked. "A billion warlords, will that be better? And the knowledge, the technology, that we have painstakingly begun to recover over the course of the Imperium, will be lost. The new dark age will be darker than the last one. Or do you deny that there will be one?"

"There might," Rask admitted. "But humanity will rise again, as it always has. And sooner or later, dips are inevitable. No doubt, there will come a new dusk – hour infernal. But such is the cycle of our rust. Such, our arc eternal."

"So you will burn it all," Qevpilum said, understanding coming along with bile deep in his throat. "Then I have no more to say, brother."

"And you surrendered choice for faith," Rask retorted. "Farewell."

Rask cut the link before Qevpilum could respond. For a second the centurion was silent, contemplating Rask's movement along the parapet, and then a rocket fell on the boulder of scrap metal he had been standing on.

He was thrown off, barely avoiding another rocket. He could barely process what had happened, hurtling through the air, but it was clear enough: Rask had ordered him to be targeted.

He landed lying down, skidding head-first away from the shield. Rask was still there, on the wall, solemnly watching.

"Brother-Centurion?" Hemcasi voxed. "Should we target the Death Guard leader?"

"No," Qevpilum said, scrambling for the bunker. He would make it; the fire was too scattered. "Not this time."


	23. Chapter Sixteen

Castrmen Orth walked towards Cassini Forge calmly and slowly, sweeping his eyes around the surrounding terrain. It had once been built in manufactorial rings; with the war, the rings had become concentric defensive trenches.

And with Ulrach Branthan's inexorable advance towards Cassini Forge, they had been flattened entirely, to the point that Orth could cross them without trouble.

Branthan, and his Clan Erigez, were mopping up Magos Ahotep's remaining men within the forge's core complex. Orth expected the battle would be over by the time he – along with Strigeus, who was at his side, and the Morlocks that Ousautro was leading through the lower tunnels – would arrive at the center. Already the guns on the walls had fallen silent, allowing Orth to walk up to the slanted walls without difficulty.

That significant achievement was, in fact, why Branthan had judged Cassini Forge effectively secured, and had summoned Orth – along with the rest of the Ethereal Hands' central cabal – to Cassini Forge. It would not be a mass assembly of the Ethereal Hands' followers – that was planned to elapse later. It was merely a gathering of plotters.

One that would end, one way or another, in death. Branthan's treachery had to be stomped out quickly, and at an unexpected time. The later assembly would be a perfect time for attack, if Ferrus's reasoning was what Branthan expected – the obvious suppression of dissent. But in truth, he wanted – like his primarch – the salvation of the Legion; and so a strike today would be both less destructive and less expected, a limited purge followed by a renewal of the Legion under Ferrus.

That, at least, was the model Ferrus's mind had come up with, using Orth's information. It was far from clear whether everything would work, and Orth would have preferred a better understanding of the precise machinations involved, as well as certainty that Branthan did not suspect him. This political confusion was not his preferred battleground, especially when it interweaved with rapid violence; but he was in a position to help protect the Legion from an internal rot, and so he would, if possible.

There was little honor in his intentions, but they were for the Legion and for the Imperium, and so he had no misgivings.

He looked around the waste as he walked, searching out traces of Branthan's experimentation. He had not augmented himself aetherically in a direct fashion, but his current eyepiece had some psychic enhancements, enough to allow tracking of other Warp effects. There were not many, but two or three rituals had evidently taken place in his vicinity. And there was something related to – the Morlocks below?

Orth had no way of knowing for sure whether that was part of Ferrus's plan or one of Branthan's traps, but the impression – for the vision was not quantitative, or at least not at the current state of development – was one of light strangeness, with no aether involved. Besides, if it was a severe problem the Morlocks would have broken vox silence.

With that in mind, Orth focused instead on the walls ahead, tilting outward at their tops. They were close enough to be in their shade, by now. Sounds from within, still, but most of them were that of construction rather than gunfire. Repair work, presumably, or else ritual.

"Brother-Centurion Orth!" Captain Gabriel Ikttagaaq said in greeting, as he ran up to Orth's side. "It is good to see you again. I see you chose to visit this conclave after all?"

"I always planned to be here," Orth said. "It would be pointless to disagree with Branthan's speed if I did not argue against it."

"But that speed brought us to aether-flesh and the Xi Vertebrae," Ikttagaaq said. Then he shrugged. "Anyhow, argue as you wish – I merely doubt many will listen."

"It's no reason to stay silent," Orth said with a shrug. "Captain Ikttagaaq, this is my second-in-command, Ashaafit Strigeus."

Strigeus, looking rather less comfortable than Orth, nodded his assent. Before any more words could be exchanged, though, the looming wall opened before them, and the Iron Hands walked into Cassini Forge.

The interior was like plenty of other Martian forges that Orth had seen. Rather less scarred than a recently conquered building had any right to be, because of Branthan's gradual approach – and even more than that. Perhaps Branthan had used his warpcraft to get in with less damage.

They walked to the left, and then down a jagged stair, following Branthan's directions. Strigeus exchanged a few words with Ikttagaaq, imitating general uncertainty – well, the uncertainty was real enough, though Strigeus could hardly reveal the reason for it.

The reason was ultimately, as for so much, the Xi Vertebrae. They were a new implant Branthan was in the process of developing, one that plugged directly into the nervous system. The Xi Vertebrae provided increased reaction time and pain tolerance, and occasional flashes of brilliant insight, but came with the massive weight of sometimes – unpredictably – losing control of one's body. It was unclear what entity, if anything, took over in those periods, though it generally did not do much of anything with the host, except ensure their survival.

And Branthan was proselytizing the Xi Vertebrae with a zeal that bordered on suspicious, evangelizing their use for all Legion members – and the Ethereal Hands bought it. Ferrus Manus did not, in the least. Orth knew both of them had far more knowledge than himself of what the implant actually did, so he merely went with his general judgment, and sided with the Primarch privately while speaking his instinctual view – a moderate position – publicly, including among the Ethereal Hands. He had done this on quite a few issues related to Branthan, though before they did not call for fratricide.

But those thoughts were only distant in the back of Orth's mind by the time he reached the room Ulrach Branthan had turned into a council chamber. It was a cylindrical space, with six doors along its sides. The ceiling was richly decorated with designs that seemed to flow with liquid metal. And the opposite door to the one Orth had entered through resounded with the sounds of gunfire, the last such sounds in Cassini Forge.

"Magos Ahotep's sanctum is not far in that direction," Branthan said, by way of both welcome and explanation.

Orth nodded, taking in the other Astartes present. Twenty of them, including himself and Strigeus, at the moment. Four more were due to arrive. Of those twenty-four, thirteen had the Xi Vertebrae in them, including Branthan's three lieutenants – Urannih, Marmtzan, and Imrsadyaved – and Branthan himself.

He nodded to Feifdun as the Iron Father came in, second-to-last. The Iron Father was the only other outspoken opponent of the Xi Vertebrae called to Cassini, and the only other council member that Orth had told the Morlocks to spare. Feifdun took Orth's offered spot next to him.

"Let's begin," Branthan said. "I am not sure whether Brother-Apothecary Ellitu is coming, but –"

"I am!" Ellitu yelled from beyond the door the gunfire was heard from. A few seconds later, he burst in, knee plates cracked. "Was it absolutely necessary to have the conclave on the edge of a war zone?"

"Apologies, again," Branthan said. "My decision was made from a geomantical standpoint, but I suspect I did not weigh realspace considerations enough."

Ellitu nodded.

"In any case," Branthan said, "let's leave ideological arguments – that includes you, Brother Feifdun – to the end of the meeting. We expect to hold the rally in Argyre, in eleven Terran days."

"That soon?" Ikttagaaq inquired.

"Ferrus seems less reasonable than I had thought," Branthan explained. "We need to show strength –"

And then the sheen of the ceiling changed from black to gold, an instant before it fell.

The Morlocks, heavy-angled armor smoking, descended in the fashion of an avalanche, and even the fractional seconds they spent dropping to the floor were not wasted. Storm bolters and rotor cannons filled the air with shells, one of which whizzed disturbingly near Orth's ear.

Orth himself took the instant to fire on Ikttagaaq, who was already raising his own weapon. Others were slower to react, Branthan among them; Orth fired again, as Ikttagaaq's face melted into dead shock, this time at Iron Father Rachan Roonsaind. Roonsaind's cybernetics blunted much of the impact, but it was enough for him to drop his own weapon, leaving perhaps five of the rebels still firing. Orth spared a glance for Feifdun, caught in a restraining hold by one of the Morlocks –

And then the Morlocks stopped motion, instantaneously, in a manner that might have violated physics and certainly opposed their will – stopped, and began sinking to the ground.

Orth looked at Branthan, as Strigeus raised his bolter to fire – but Branthan, with his helmet on by now, simply swept his hands aside, sending a shockwave through the room. Strigeus's shot went wide, slamming into a back wall, and the Morlocks…

They were dead. Every last one of them. No rasping last breaths, either, their lives cut short in a sorcerous instant. Feifdun was breathing, but still immobilized by the Morlock on top of him, looking some mixture of frustrated and confused.

Roonsaind and Xage Urannih, both wounded, stumbled to Branthan's side, though Urannih toppled before getting there, sorely wounded despite being fated to heal in time. Roonsaind gnashed metallic teeth as Branthan stared, impassive. Strigeus was at Orth's side, drawing his blade. Two against two.

"So you betrayed us after all," Branthan growled. "I suppose I should have expected as much, but I'd held hope that you would restrain yourself to reasoned debate."

"You call _me_ the traitor?"

Branthan swept his head around the room, filled with its groans of dying Astartes – and of the silent Morlocks. Whatever Branthan had done, Orth had noticed the obvious, namely that it had affected only the Avernii. Presumably, that was because of the Warp-taint he had sensed earlier – a mark, on those who would enter uninvited. Though Branthan had not been suspicious, at first – so perhaps it had been when they fell through the ceiling?

"This room shows clearly enough," Branthan said with barely constrained fury, "who betrayed whom." Roonsaind, in the momentary truce, bent down to a Morlock body, loosening its arms to unlock Feifdun – before falling on his back.

Feifdun raised his spear out of the gaping hole in Roonsaind's body, one that had pierced the other Iron Father's body vertically from head to left toe, and slid it back into its casing. Roonsaind had had enough organs replaced that even that had not been a guaranteed kill, but apparently it had worked.

"I'd always suspected you, Rachan," he muttered to his fallen comrade. Then he turned to face Branthan, lowering his spear, as Orth and Strigeus began to charge, while his opponent lowered his gun – what sort of bolter was that anyhow? – and shot, blindly and accurately. Feifdun stumbled back, wounded in the knee. Branthan used the distraction to duck out of a door.

Retreat? Though Branthan would understand, now, that such truly was his best choice. He could yet inspire a rebellion, after all, with or without the others; plenty in the Legion had the Xi Vertebrae installed, if nowhere near a majority.

Orth ran after, Strigeus following – no, there was no telling what would happen to Feifdun, like this. "Watch the wounded!" Orth yelled, Strigeus nodding without satisfaction. Orth was far from certain that he could take Branthan alone, but then neither of them was a duelist.

Branthan did not spare a glance back as he ran through the corridor, but Orth had no doubt he heard the pursuit, even if his armor's sensors were for some reason non-functional. The Ethereal Hand did not pause, however, to fight, instead grabbing what appeared to be a cable and swinging forward. Orth thrust his hand forward, grasping the same cable in one fluid motion, an instant before it jerked upward.

The cable, and the two Space Marines on it, soared upwards through a shaft Orth could barely distinguish the top of – one that clearly led to the very top of Cassini Forge. Orth made to climb upward, but spared a look downward as the heat sensors recorded a river of molten metal, rushing perpendicular to flood the corridor he'd left Strigeus in.

There was no time for regret, though, nor worth, and his lieutenant would probably notice the stream anyhow. The cable flew up, through a particularly thick level – and then the two Marines were passing what seemed to be a hangar floor. And on the floor, mounted on massive rockets, a ship. A grand hemisphere, its lower part supported by solidified fire, festooned with cannons – big enough that by all rights it should have been constructed in orbit, even if it was only frigate-sized.

Shots bounced off Orth's armor, Branthan receiving the same reception; only a few skitarii, though, were actually shooting. For the most part the hangar, like the ship's exterior, was deserted. The inside was immune to Orth's surficial scans, but from appearances Ahotep had simply converted much of his forge's volume into the vessel – the _Dragonwing One_ , Orth could now see.

"Did you even fight Ahotep?" Orth screamed upwards, through the fading hail of gunfire.

"Yes, and it's my blockade that will finish him," Branthan replied as he repositioned himself, swinging his sword to cut the cable and drop Orth into the skitarii or the melt – but he'd waited too long for that. Orth swung and leapt, landing on a ceramite platform hanging near the _Dragonwing One_ 's mass, once presumably used to machine the ship from outside. It had not been removed – Ahotep wasn't done yet, that much was clear. Branthan made a similar jump, flying towards the same platform.

"We have seen gods' perfection," he screamed far too loudly to explain physically, "so surrender your metal!"

"Not surrendering anything," Orth answered, gripping his sword and adjusting his stance against the incoming Astarte impact.

"Aether-flesh is the zenith – and we'll prove it _in battle_!"

Where were Branthan's men, anyhow? Were they even in the forge? Certainly there was little sign of struggle – Ahotep had, it seemed, executed an orderly retreat, and Branthan hadn't risked his men. If he had them, that is.

Branthan landed, and swords met, even as the platform swung and tried to throw them both off. Both kept their balance, but only just, as it tipped far to the north, Orth pushed back into one of the cables holding the basket up.

"Why betray the Legion?" Branthan taunted, as he pressed forward, though how he had the breath to waste on words Orth didn't know; he defended, parrying, but Branthan's strength was clearly greater. The platform reached its apex, and blades met again and again, sparking in the air, only the cable preventing Orth from falling off the platform. But the platform swung back, and the acceleration began to reverse.

Branthan was focused, abnormally so. What drug he was on, Orth had no idea. For his part, he observed, as the platform swung south, the sparks in the air, the intricate microstructure barely visible in the walls outside that was now scarred by hurried servitors, the first tongues of red below the edifice of the ship.

"I chose not to abandon our past," Orth gasped between breaths as he pressed, now with a brief advantage, though Branthan seemingly didn't even notice the platform's swinging. "Aether, but not before iron!"

"Aether is stronger!" Branthan said. "We will not back down on progress!"

Stronger, but not wiser. Branthan did not react to the acceleration, his vastly augmented strength making it unnecessary. As the thundering fire below turned from a dim red to an incandescent orange, Orth twisted the platform, combining it with a strike to Branthan's legs. The opposing Hand's reply would have been lethal if it had happened on flat ground; instead, it merely carved a deep gouge into Orth's armor, as the captain of Clan Erigez plummeted down into the first beats of inferno.

Progress required caution. A blind rush, just as easily, led backward - or downward, in this case.

A survivable plunge for a Space Marine, under normal conditions. But as Branthan fell, the Dragonwing One lifted off, at first so slowly Orth feared it would fall back down. Then it accelerated, rising higher and higher on heat and fury. Branthan met the exhaust head-on, as the ceiling above simply ceased to exist, phased through by Ahotep's ship carrying the last of Cassini Forge.

Orth realized a touch too late that he was himself far from safe from the launch. The scalding gas washed outwards over his armor, penetrating beneath to burn his Black Carapace. The cables did worse, disintegrating, dropping the Iron Hand onto a northwards arc.

Orth barely felt the impact with the northward wall, the punishment nearly enough to send even a Space Marine into unconsciousness. Still, he rolled into position, as the smoke clouds reduced visibility to a matter of centimeters. He lay there, breathing heavily, trying to gather his thoughts.

His vox crackled.

"Strigeus here," his lieutenant noted. "What happened up there, Brother-Centurion?"

"Branthan is dead," Orth muttered with some effort – his lungs were clearly damaged, all three of them. He could already feel the regeneration beginning, though. The smoke was clearing, white wisps going… somewhere. The hangar around him was a charred mess, the spot where Branthan's body had melted barely recognizable. Microsculptures hopelessly ruined, the Mechanicum escaping – but that was Branthan's fault, and there was no shortage of blockading ships in the Solar System at the moment.

The ceiling, it seemed, had somehow vanished entirely (an illusion?), and the white sun, approaching the horizon, was visible over the walls. It illuminated fire and iron.

And Castrmen Orth, struggling to his feet in the graveyard of a mad dream.


	24. Chapter Seventeen

Durak Rask stood on the wall's top, by now protected by the parapet alone with the void shield overwhelmed into uselessness, as Magma City shook from artillery fire, perhaps ten minutes away from the final mass assault by Cadmus Qevpilum's Iron Hands, and wondered at just how similar Koriel Zeth really was to Qevpilum.

Perhaps, he knew, it was more correct to wonder the converse. Zeth was an adept of the Martian Mechanicum, and her dedication to progress, if occasionally above wisdom, was an intrinsic part of both her selection and her creed. But the Iron Hands had been just another Legion, before. Close to the Mechanicum, yes, but it was Zeth that Rask would have expected to choose submission to Imperial madness over the risk of losing largely idle information.

Though, of course, if that had been the point of disagreement, Magnus and Perturabo would have been enemies now, while Angron and Vulkan would've been allies, while rumor had indicated the opposite. No, not all Astartes saw the war as Rask did, and Mars was not the only battlefield that matter.

A ping on Rask's retinal display, as a fireball bloomed uncomfortably close to the Death Guard's position, caused him to frown. Neither of them were ones much for social excesses, but he did wish to say goodbye to Koriel Zeth before the Forgemistress left.

Especially since, in defiance of the plan he had informed Zeth of, he would not be seeing her, nor the accompanying Squad Sofev, again.

He walked down from the parapet, barely bothering with a glance back. He had given overall command to Falenatak for this period, while he and Lgalun were taking some long breaths, in the minutes before Magma City's fall.

Because it would fall. One way or another, it would fall.

He passed empty staircases, as well as manufactoria, idle for the first time in – decades, perhaps? Centuries? He did not think it was millennia, but if someone told him it was, his reaction would not be disbelief. Mars was an old world, and the Mechanicum an old culture. Albeit a changing one, which was the reason for his skepticism. The recent rise of the Order of the Dragon was ample evidence of as much.

The floor holding the portal was, by contrast, full of ant-like activity, but even that was winding down. Servitors carried the last boxes into the tunnel, biological components straining, as the first members of Echalo Sofev's squad vanished into its darkness. Rask emerged onto a catwalk above as Zeth, herself, took the first step after the last of her human tech-priests.

"Adept Zeth!" Rask exclaimed, voice amplified by his helmet's systems.

The Forgemistress turned, showing perhaps some slight surprise. "Ordnance Master Rask?"

"Farewell," Rask said, wondering if he should take his helmet off. Yes, there was not much risk – he unclasped it and looked at the scene below with his own, if augmented, eyes. "And good luck in the Mechanicum's reconstruction."

Zeth paused. "You're not planning on surrendering, are you?"

It took Rask a moment to process the notion before violently shaking his head. "Not even Qevpilum would receive, or accept, my surrender. But he might get my head."

"Then farewell," Zeth said, "and may he not receive it."

Zeth nodded, Rask nodding back, and then she was gone with the chain of servitors, and then Sofev saluted farewell as Rask responded.

That left only five squads in Magma City – Rask, Rurgon, Falenatak, Lgalun and Mineceno. Five squads in theory, but in reality four and a half, as Leskos Rurgon and several of his men had fallen during one of the earlier clashes. Falenatak would be last to leave – Lgalun was already relieving him, Rask noted on his visor with some surprise. That was only meant to happen when Qevpilum made his move. Were things evolving that fast?

He therefore rushed down the staircase – well, rushed in a relative sense, he wasn't in battle after all. Lgalun knew everything, Falenatak only most of it. But Lgalun had been uncomfortable with leaving no record of their reasoning, and Rask supposed Mortarion would agree.

He paused as he reached the clanging stairs' bottom, facing Zeth's abandoned command throne. Mortarion would agree – but he only partially did. Was his devotion fading?

No, he realized. It was merely that talking to Mineceno had redirected it. Changed him, as he had changed the infantry sergeant; perhaps that was why he walked so readily towards death. He was still fighting for Mortarion, yes, but Mortarion as a symbol. Because Mortarion was a symbol. All the Primarchs were, he supposed, or at least many of them. And what Mortarion stood for –

Preferable death. Preferable destruction. And also determination, and individual excellence, and all the other fragments of war, and that eternal dusk.

No doubt there would come a new dusk… hour infernal.

"But such is the cycle of our rust," Rask muttered. Even past war, some things did not yield readily to the Mechanicum's dreaming. "Such our arc eternal." And that was not necessarily malicious, nor indeed was it necessarily unfortunate.

It was merely what the world was. Part of its fabric, like the stars themselves.

"Brother Durak Rask?"

"Brother Zecusor Falenatak," Rask said, raising his head to meet the artillery sergeant and the squad and a half with him – Squad Rurgon's remnants had been summoned as well. Falenatak's own moved a fraction of a millimeter back, and two of his Astartes' eyes widened. Not enough to indicate something was actually wrong, however, as Rask confirmed with a ping.

"Brother Falenatak," Rask repeated as he extended his left hand and the object therein, "the Almenis key."

He felt Magma City shake again. Differently than the previous artillery strikes. One of the last volleys, he would estimate.

Cadmus Qevpilum's task force would be inside within the next minute.

Falenatak, understanding the urgency, took the key and ordered his squad forward.

"Squads Rask, Lgalun, and Mineceno will remain in the Magma City," Rask stated. "You will close the portal behind you – merely say 'close' in any language known to you as you touch the key within the lock – and we will fight a delaying action against the Iron Hands. We will then detonate the reactor, drowning Magma City and all industry, archives, and people therein in, fittingly, magma, along with the Iron Hands themselves."

"So you did lie to Zeth," Falenatak noted, inserting his cube into the door's mechanism.

Rask shrugged. Lies were far down on the hierarchy of sins, by now, and it would not impede future working relations, given how this would end. "Necessary."

"No," Falenatak said with genuine anger, "merely convenient."

Rask made no comment.

"Close!" Falenatak exclaimed in Gothic, and then they were gone.

Rask walked in the reverse direction, away from the command throne, away from the closing portal. He paused, Falenatak's words echoing in his head, then broke into a sprint. Falenatak, he concluded, did not understand. Perhaps that was for the better – Falenatak, after all, was to live.

Most of his squad were manning the walls, alongside Lgalun's and Mineceno's, but Mnisen Ipharoj and Rulvon Atigrarin were waiting for him behind the door. Both fell into line behind him with a nod.

 _They_ knew everything. Every Death Guard that had stayed behind had been well-aware how this would end. Lgalun and Mineceno had both refused, despite Rask's objections, to leave and let Rask's squad alone make the sacrifice. With Mineceno that had been expected; with Lgalun, it had not.

Lgalun was managing the battle now, and Rask made no move to intervene. His duty was different. The first Iron Hands were over the walls, clashing with disposable servitors and the Astartes of Mineceno's and Lgalun's squads. Too little, by far, to protect Magma City. But they would keep it for long _enough_.

Magma City would fall. But Rask would yet have the chance to determine how.

Rask jogged, Ipharoj and Atigrarin at his sides, westwards through the complex. Toward Magma City's reactors, taking an arcuate path by the cone's ceramic walls, helically moving upward. The forge had not been designed for fastest internal movement, merely for efficient transport of materials. Another reminder that Mars had not been built for war, merely refitted for it at the last moment.

Or not for civil war, at least. Bombardment… the Mechanicum had planned for large-scale conflicts, but had neglected individual heroism by comparison. As usual.

Rask knelt by a firing slit and took up a shoulder cannon, of the Rinikkir experimental design. He let off several volleys, coordinating with Ipharoj and Atigrarin. Apart from brief pings to synchronize time, they did not speak. But they had fought together for long enough that words would be merely, as the Adepts phrased such things, inefficient.

Iron Hands fell under their aim, though most of them would ultimately live. Still, they were close enough to Magma City that the volcano's collapse had a decent chance of ending them nonetheless, excluding evacuation.

Then a shell hit the wall to Rask's left, tossing Ipharoj backwards and causing Rask to instinctively shield his eyes despite his helmet being secured. Shrapnel scattered itself through the air, and Atigrarin was already running. Rask pulled Ipharoj to his feet before following. Ipharoj, Rask noted as he ran, took a moment to scramble fully upright, regaining his senses; but he was following along normally after that. Perhaps some minor damage, but Rask wasn't an Apothecary, and it didn't matter in context.

So they rushed northwards along the wall, Rask counting down the meters to the reactor control rooms. Lgalun's analysis said the Iron Hands were already within the complex, and –

And Durak Rask's thoughts were rudely interrupted by an Iron Hand directly in front of them.

Atigrarin was the one to run forward against him, slamming bodily into the enemy and pushing him to the ground. Rask ran up to assist, but it appeared to be unnecessary as Atigrarin grabbed his sword and stabbed the Iron Hand, again and again. His hearts should have been gone already, but it was taking the Iron Hand an embarrassingly long time to die.

"Go!" Atigrarin yelled, and Rask and Ipharoj ran past, heading towards the iron maintenance door. Wrenching it open, he stepped into the unlit room, Ipharoj covering. Calling it a room was an oversimplification, of course – some of the upper vats vanished into the dark.

Ipharoj still covering, Rask intently walked towards the south side of the room. He knelt by the panel, entering the first digits of the code Zeth had given him, with everything else, but instructed not to use.

And then the shot, and Rask involuntarily glanced back.

Ipharoj was immobile, and for an instant Rask almost thought he had imagined the sound. But then the gun slid out of his loosened grip, and a few drops of blood trickled out of his neck clasps.

And Cadmus Qevpilum stood in the doorway, surrounded by a ring of light from the burning outdoors, smoking bolter tightly clasped in his left hand. Rask had not thought Qevpilum would beeline here, but he supposed it was not surprising, in retrospect, that the Squid had foreseen his plan.

They had been so similar, after all, once. Yes, Rask had a spark of dedication to his Primarch that was far less pronounced in Qevpilum's mind, but they had warred side by side for a reason. Blunt instruments on a tactical level, far from it on a strategic, total devotion to their craft, and a fondness for heavy weaponry; but also a philosophy of determination through the dust.

A philosophy that had been nothing, for either of them, compared to Primarch loyalty. That they were faced with each other was chance, but Rask doubted that Qevpilum would ever have taken the right side in this war, not unless Ferrus did.

Rask's right hand entered the last digit of the code, and the Death Guard ran north, to get to the other reactor's controls – but Qevpilum was there, and Rask was defending, batting aside blow after blow from Qevpilum's power pike. No words – Qevpilum was personally angry for some reason, and Rask was generally so, and had no questions besides. Two of Qevpilum's men followed their commander into the chamber, but Qevpilum waved them backward.

Shots in the gallery. Atigrarin, Rask supposed. But most of his mind was dedicated to the fight with Qevpilum. If the northern reactor did not blow soon, Magma City would still drop into the lava lake, its supports unable to hold its weight for long. He had already done his job. But Qevpilum would have time to evacuate, making the last stand a questionable exercise.

The southern reactor's blast rang out in the distance, a boom that disturbed both Astartes' senses of balance. Qevpilum was worse-affected, and so Rask's blows pressed his once-friend backwards, northwards, towards the panel that would end it all –

And then Rask felt a fire in his gut, and a glance down confirmed it was Qevpilum's weapon.

He tried to respond likewise, to drive his chainsword into Qevpilum's chest, but he could not force it forward through the pain. Qevpilum indented a button, and Rask slid to the ground, unable to even scream. It seemed quiet, somehow.

Perhaps, Rask groggily realized, it was that his hearts weren't beating.

He tried to close his eyes as Cadmus Qevpilum raised his pike for the final blow.

 _For Mortarion_ , he thought as the light he could see despite his best efforts came closer. _For humanity, and for the dusk that is inevitable, no matter how hard Cadmus will struggle._

 _And, after we have together burnt it all to void, for the fresh dawn after._


	25. Interlude: Traveler

As he ran through yet another collapsing building, Anrakyr the Traveler had to admit that he should really have planned the excursion better this time. Though he had at least secured almost all of his objectives.

Except for, thus far, survival. Rather important, that.

"Do you have the gate's precise coordinates?" Srequi Lantrane inquired, running at his side, a half-step behind.

"Yes," Anrakyr said as they rounded a batch of metal boxes, "but they predate this complex." As Lantrane should really have realized. Well, Anrakyr supposed she was still adapting to her new body.

Lantrane had been a surprise. Anrakyr had taken her along because companions tended to make travel more interesting, but her behavior with respect to the Mag'ladroth shard… that had been unexpected. Its outcome, moreso.

Anrakyr's circuits still burned with fury at what the Dragon of Mars had done. He recognized, though, that Lantrane did not feel the same. Bereft of context, bereft of betrayal, he supposed the transformation could indeed be interpreted as a blessing. Of course, that was not to say he would forgive the C'tan for what they had done.

Nor that it would affect his actions much if he did, considering the star-gods' nature as devourers of worlds.

Still, Lantrane was a Necron now – the equivalent for her own race, that is, but the same thing in all relevant ways – and he had an unexpected apprentice. Anrakyr found he rather liked humans, when compared to most of the races now inhabiting the galaxy. Young, yes, but determined, rational, self-modifying, and… well, how many other species would be willing to fight their own god-emperor for their moral qualities?

And though Anrakyr's loyalties were ever with his own species, he knew the humans had a critical role to play in this last war. What that role was, of course, was a different matter. They did not share the Necrontyr's homeworld, after all, but rather that of their ancient enemies. Not that such omens mattered except with respect to the Warp, as homeworlds could spawn quite… diverse sapients.

"There!" Lantrane exclaimed, causing Anrakyr to swivel his head for a fraction of a second, before realizing that Lantrane's vantage point was allowing her to see something he did not. Therefore, the gate was… down.

Without thinking much, Anrakyr used his momentum to grab onto the catwalk's handrails and jump over the edge, onto the metallic floor far below. Lantrane hesitated, still subconsciously assuming she would break something – or correcting for uncertainty about her new body, more charitably.

She jumped a few seconds later, as Anrakyr landed in a roll, sending clanging sounds through the factory complex. Now he saw the portal, even blocked as it was by the empty command throne. Lantrane landed seconds after, as the forge complex tilted with the aftereffects of the explosion. Both stayed on their feet, though Anrakyr saw that for Lantrane it was not without difficulty.

"It's closed!" Lantrane yelled, running towards the portal.

Disappointing, again. Though it was a high-stress situation, and Lantrane would be used to chemical impediments in context – and then, confirmation bias. Or a psychological quirk. It was hard to know, since Anrakyr had far too little information on the transformation, what with the original one being simultaneous.

"Not to us," Anrakyr said back, without screaming but loudly enough for Lantrane to easily hear over their footsteps.

They came up to the Dolmen gate together, a ceramic circle built into the rock, with seemingly more sandy rock within it. Anrakyr stepped first as if through air, as the floor slanted dramatically in the other direction, and then he was himself barely on his feet, standing half on the Webway fragment and half in empty space. Lantrane did not have that, dropping towards the lava lake below –

Her fingers closed around his, and Anrakyr pulled Srequi Lantrane into the Dolmen gate, which flickered permanently shut behind them.

"Apologies and thanks," Lantrane said. She looked around, in genuine awe, if Anrakyr's interpretation of human facial expressions was correct. "So this is what Zeth was hiding."

"I suppose," Anrakyr admitted. "But only the least fraction of the Dolmen paths, which were itself far lesser than the Old Ones' Webway."

Lantrane nodded, as they walked along the unchanging corridor. At the first closed gate, Lantrane stared into its unlit depths and nodded.

"My map is current," she said. "Though these paths have changed from your time, no?"

"They have," Anrakyr admitted. That the Dragon had fresh data was, indeed, disturbing, if not unexpected. "Should we change to binary?"

Lantrane turned and stared, for long seconds, down the open path. Towards her past species' rebellion, towards her friend Zeth, towards the life she could have had. Anrakyr supposed she was deliberating leaving him. Not unreasonable, and if she transferred him the coordinates he would allow it. It would take long minutes to decide, anyhow, for one such as her. Anrakyr supposed he would spend the time deciding how to best phrase his response. Not to Lantrane, but rather to the Silent King. He did not like going to the pinnacle first, he would have preferred to assist in awakening Tomb Worlds himself and building up a negotiating platform, but there was far too little time. After far too much. How much of this had been planned? And by whom?

Four and a half seconds after Anrakyr's question, Srequi Lantrane stepped through the locked gate with her left foot, and turned her head towards the Phaeron of Pyrrhia.

"Let's go," she transmitted in Necron binary.

Four and a half seconds, to leave her born identity behind. For Anrakyr sixty million years had not been entirely sufficient.

Well, he supposed that was evidence he, too, had room for improvement.

Throwing his cloak around his shoulders as he had mantled himself with eternity, Anrakyr of Pyrrhia followed Srequi Lantrane of Mars into the pulsating darkness.


	26. Chapter Eighteen

The battle for Magma City had been won, but Cadmus Qevpilum knew that the things more important than battle had been lost.

He stood on a platform, the forge's high point, which had once housed the Death Guard's command post. The body of Sergeant Lgalun lay at his feet, though it had been Zerondem who'd killed the Death Guard commander. Qevpilum had assumed that Rask had led the defenders… but the importance of that was null, now. The third Death Guard squad, Mineceno, had been on the front lines, though Nusaamnius had worriedly mentioned not all of their bodies had been found. Deception aside, there were no Astartes of the Fourteenth Legion left in Magma City, or on the rest of Mars.

And he'd killed Rask. A traitor, of course, the action had been necessary. But they had been brothers, once. That did not vanish for him as easily as, by appearance, for Rask.

That was only the third-greatest defeat of the day, however. The second was that the Death Guard had apparently been evacuating Mechanicum personnel, as well as data, throughout the war. Lgalun, Rask, and the others had stayed behind, to kill loyal Astartes, but those – Adepts, mainly, Qevpilum expected – who had fled were far from irrelevant. And they would yet frustrate the Imperium.

The first was that Magma City would fall into the depths of its volcano within the hour, and its numerous archives with it.

"Brother-Centurion?" Tlaar Hemcasi asked, walking up to Qevpilum.

Hemcasi's leg was mangled, and Qevpilum knew he should really see an Apothecary. Less due to triage, and more for separating commanders within a collapsing forge complex. Magma City, dropping off, piece by piece, with nothing he could do –

But no, this was not Pyrrhia. Still not a battle, perhaps, but not unwinnable. Even when limited to the current setup.

Qevpilum listed through the schematics, trying to find the biggest cohesive block of archives that would be relevant and might be intact, assuming the Death Guard had not intentionally moved them (there were far too many to steal everything through whatever magic transportation Lgalun'd had). 02B – no, those were restricted military schematics, dangerous enough that perhaps they would be best drowned in magma. Moreover, the traitors and adepts would have raided them. Far from sure that they would be intact.

No, 12L was the better bet. Marginally smaller, dealing with medical technology and evolutionary biology. Much of it incompletely understood, yet. And he could see the region, twisting walls colored orange and silver – 12L would still be intact, at the moment.

"Brother-Centurion?" Hemcasi inquired again.

"Brother Hemcasi," Qevpilum answered. "Set up cranes. We should be able to raise Block 12L onto the slopes."

Hemcasi tilted his head in surprise. "I was going to say… wait. Remove Block 12L? _Why_?"

Did Hemcasi not see, or was it Qevpilum?

"To save the information within," Qevpilum explained. "The Death Guard have been extinguished; this is the best commitment of our time."

Hemcasi cautiously nodded. Qevpilum opened the vox channel to Venth Zerondem, repeating his order to Hemcasi; again a pause, albeit a lesser one.

"I will contact the Mechanicum," Zerondem said, "but will the block hold together?"

That was unclear – as Qevpilum jogged down the complex's edge, he could understand Zerondem's skepticism. If merely lifted from above, the holes in 12L would shatter it, and maybe a tenth could be lifted. It would need to be separated from its neighbors, and even after that the bottom half lifting would not be a sure thing.

It was the best shot they had, though. "Squads Hemcasi, Hierrth, Nistrlaq – under Brother Hemcasi's command, cut all physical connections between block 12L, coordinates appended, and surrounding Magma City blocks. Command squad, squad Ixeutyi – under my command, support block 12L from below. Squad Zerondem, work with the tech-priests to raise the block from above. Use all available machinery."

He descended into the Magma City on foot, ever cautious of errant movements as the forge flaked apart from below. A few murals and filigreed sculptures worked into the walls lined the corridors, but for the most part the abandoned complex was a monument to humanity in stark, utilitarian fashion. Qevpilum preferred that – it was fundamentally honest, and more importantly did not waste resources. Art had its place, perhaps, but this was not it.

It was strange, that some in the Mechanicum did not seem to recognize that. Their perception of beauty may not have been the same as baseline humanity's, but they still placed significant weight into it.

But then, that was part of what they fought for as well, was it not? The freedom not to be limited to survival. It was not as if humanity would go extinct, if Mortarion's like won. But life was more than… well, servitor status. And complexity, in its inconstant arc, sometimes turned to strange eddies.

Eddies, here, of presses and of channels, of iron etched with the promise of sublime destiny, a promise that was not destiny's to keep. Qevpilum traced a hive of pipes and cables into the depths, a nest that changed color and anastomosed as he jogged, but led unerringly down, to the base of 12L.

Qevpilum nodded to Hemcasi as he passed his lieutenant, the latter sawing angrily while fastened to one of the complex's many divided ceilings. Anwiter was waiting with _Ignition Grasp_ below, and in the corner nest –

Qevpilum had time to scream a warning, as he raised his own bolter. Hemcasi did not have time to hear it.

Qevpilum's lieutenant fell, even as the centurion dashed into the hall. Hemcasi's armor impacted the floor on its back with a grinding crunch, but the fall was not fatal; the headshot, however, was. A halo of blood surrounded Hemcasi's ruined head, its central ray pointing straight towards the nest from which the killing shot had come.

Nusaamnius was next in line, now, if Qevpilum died here. But as the centurion ran past his brother's body, he realized that such an outcome was unlikely. The Death Guard within wore a sergeant's armor, but pitted and mangled to the point where one would at first think the Astarte within was dead. Likely Hemcasi had thought so, too.

Sergeant Mineceno began to raise his bolter again, but he was far too slow. Qevpilum had unlatched and extended his pike with his left hand, and now drove it forward like a javelin with his right, impaling Mineceno's head on its tip in one movement.

The bolter dropped from Mineceno's gray-armored fingers, and Qevpilum waited for a few seconds to ensure the traitor sergeant had not somehow survived. Kicking the Astarte to confirm in full, he walked back to Hemcasi's body, kneeling to his lieutenant.

His gene-seed was intact, at least, and so Qevpilum raised Hemcasi's body onto his shoulders and walked down the few remaining steps, meeting Anwiter's unhelmeted gaze, his squadmate's head plugged into cables and mechatendrils that snaked down his armor.

"Hemcasi was killed by a hiding Death Guard," Qevpilum clarified. "Mark Sergeant Mineceno's body as found."

Anwiter frowned and nodded, looking at Eulemaz and his bike. Qevpilum handed Hemcasi's body over as he climbed up _Ignition Grasp_ 's side, noting the newly repainted Legion sigil on the tank's side.

"Apothecarion, and come right back, Brother Eulemaz," Qevpilum ordered. "We need all hands."

Qevpilum climbed into the hatch, Anwiter following him.

"Zerondem suggested modifications to your plan," Anwiter said, "for efficiency's sake. He plans to redirect –"

"Accept them all."

They drove through the forge complex, occasionally bulldozing a particularly stubborn support. Ixeutyi's team marked the remaining two Death Guard bodies, meaning Magma City was now provably cleared. Well, unless Lgalun had brought along Astartes not from the three destroyed squads, just for this purpose. Qevpilum couldn't be entirely certain.

The plascrete above began to infinitesimally move, as Zerondem began to wrench 12L free of its mooring. Qevpilum tossed a few disc grenades into a hole below, watching them explode and send another doomed chunk of the Magma City into the fire. Then they drove onwards, across this boundary floor, dark except for what the Iron Hands provided, full of abandoned metal. Ever westwards, towards the crater wall.

He didn't talk with Anwiter, in those minutes, except to declare targets. Qevpilum did order the rest of his squad, in accordance with Zerondem's calculations. But the rate of collapse was on the high end of those expectations.

Ahead, Qevpilum could see the wall of dark pink rock, the complex's end. The ceiling above began to buckle, Zerondem accelerating his work to counter the collapse below.

They didn't have time for the initial plan, Qevpilum recognized. He was no tech-priest, but he had studied and seen enough of mechanics to know the building wouldn't hold, even if _Ignition Grasp_ continued moving at full speed. Moreover, _Ignition Grasp_ could well fall through the floor and into the lava lake below – and the tank's loss would be almost as tragic as its crew's in that case.

"Park _Ignition Grasp_ at the wall," Qevpilum told Anwiter. "I'll set up the second support point on foot."

Anwiter looked at Qevpilum with uncertainty, but obeyed. "The flesh is weak!" he said.

"Fire and Iron!" Qevpilum responded, with a brief nod to the veteran.

 _Ignition Grasp_ 's hatch sprung open and Qevpilum jumped out, running northward along the wall of barely modified stone. Circuits built into some of its surface, yes, and supports that Qevpilum chopped through with strokes of his pike, but that uneven red curtain still separated transhumanity's world from that which existed for billions of years before the first sapience on Earth woke.

But then, was not Mars a dead world before humanity's arrival? Deep time may not have been humanity's, but humanity's echoes would linger through it, even if all Earth-descended life vanished in one impossible instant.

Qevpilum shook his head to evade the grim thoughts, tracing the rough rock, and chopped through a final nail before walking to the point where the second support had been meant to be.

And above, the ceiling creaked and slanted.

It was too early, still. But Zerondem had accelerated, trusting in his centurion to keep up… or he'd had no choice. Below, Qevpilum saw decimeter-scale fragments of Magma City pouring like sand into the furnace – cables, supports, electronics, screens, and weirder industrial dust.

Without time to think, Qevpilum stood on a bump in the floor, bending to support the complex's weight and pushing upward. Too much for a single Astarte to hold, of course, a thousand times too much… but then most of the weight was Zerondem's and Anwiter's, and Ixeutyi's at the third support point. So Qevpilum held the ceiling, and the sky above.

Perhaps 12L had been a bit too much, he thought as his teeth grit against each other, as he felt flakes of bone leave his vertebrae; but then, when had Astartes settled for merely enough? And he was not only an Astarte, but an Iron Hand.

The weight began to lift, Qevpilum's cracking knees extending into verticality. The pain did not go away. He'd need surgery after this, need to turn more of his body into iron, effectively rebuild himself entirely. Still, he felt the going get easier, as he pushed the bump he was standing on flat, as the gray floor above lifted, lifted –

And then he felt the crack.

It was deafening, and at first Qevpilum though that he had failed 12L. But the ceiling continued to rise, even letting light in. Reddish white light from above, reddish orange from below –

That was when Qevpilum recognized that the crack had been below him, and that he was falling.

There was a circle of fire, his exhausted eyes recognized. Not a ring, but a splotch of certain scorching doom, whose heat he could barely feel, distantly warming his feet from below. The fall would be mortal, even without the lava. Around him, more dust… well, a macroscale version thereof. It drifted down, like hail into a lake.

Above, 12L's rise revealed a fragment of dusty sky, _Ignition Grasp_ 's side visible on a solid ledge. Below… below, Qevpilum knew he was falling back-first now, looking upward towards the sun, cresting in the sky. Qevpilum would not see another dusk.

He wasn't particularly bothered, by that.

No doubt there would come a new dusk… but no doubt, either, that the last dusk would come, and quite possibly soon. One way or another. As in all things. Death would die; the only question would be whether it would be before or after it had destroyed all else.

The principles of Chaos which Ferrus spoke about… they were merely one more step. Driven first by death, perhaps. But sworn, brightly, to life. All of them were, or at least had to be.

The heat was scalding, now, but Qevpilum did not close his eyes in those last instants before the impact came.

Instead he opened them as wide as he could, taking in the iron – and not only iron, but then for the Tenth iron had only ever been a shorthand for creation – hail and 12L, by now safe above the crater, partially eclipsing Sol; taking in the red sky and the redder walls, webbed with humanity's legacy. And taking in, not physically but with his imagination's brightest parts, the heroes of Mars gazing at smoking foundations of marvels like few yet known.

And smiling. Because the foundations were enough.


	27. Chapter Nineteen

_One Terran month later_

The barely lit tunnel stretched ahead of Srequi Lantrane, a mix of green and dark gray alloys bounding a corridor with a coffin-like cross-section. Where the earlier paths had branched and weaved, this one was straight and (given that they were in a realm not bound to the same distances as the material) unnecessarily long. Anrakyr even exuded uncertainty over the possibility of a trap.

Lantrane knew there was none. The path to Szarekh had, she recognized, been engineered to induce doubt in those who trod it, even if they were Necron. Still, if pressed, she would have admitted uncertainty. After all, Szarekh's location was not entirely a secret – the Dragon of Mars, that ancient enemy of the Necron race, had managed to somehow uncover it. And yet there was this interminable corridor.

Over a Terran month of walking, according to her internal chronometer, with some property of the walls inhibiting running, and presumably mechanical transportation. Anrakyr had said, at first, that it was a fitting walk for an audience with the Silent King.

"It still is," Anrakyr transmitted, and Lantrane recognized she had transmitted that last thought. "If it is not a trap."

"Five and a half minutes," Lantrane updated Anrakyr. Unnecessary, but a firm reminder that they were almost there.

To meet the being that had led the Necrons to their destiny. While on quite a few subjects he had insisted on keeping his silence, Anrakyr had told Lantrane of Szarekh, the last Silent King, who had forged the pact with the sinister grandeur of the C'tan to take vengeance on the Old Ones of Terra. Who had led his people to sacrifice their souls, and in many cases their very minds, for immortality, but led them too to victory in an impossible war. Who had, in the end, betrayed his gods and restored the free will of those Necrons who could still enjoy it. And who had, in the last instant of his undisputed reign, caged the Necrons for sixty million years (sixty-five, if Terran), for reasons Anrakyr did not fully understand.

To awaken at the End, calculated to within a few millennia on a scale of aeons. Lantrane did not need even her Mechanicum augmentations to recognize the implausibility of that being accidental.

Most of the Necrons were still in stasis, and Anrakyr himself had only recently awoken, spending the last decades covertly visiting other worlds and ushering them into this new era. Many had been less grateful than Anrakyr had hoped and expected. Nonetheless, he had thus far come out ahead on resources. But with the situation being as desperate as it was, Anrakyr had decided to sacrifice freedom and summon the Silent King, if Szarekh still lived.

Lantrane, on that, would honor her part of the bargain. Liberty had never been high among the Mechanicum's values – all Adepts were servants of the Quest for Knowledge, and while there was a certain amount of equalized discretion implied in that, there was also a certain amount of random defiance forbidden by it. And she had sacrificed her life once, to a mad god. Sacrificing her liberty to a reluctant king…

If, of course, Szarekh would listen. And on that matter, she could only trust Anrakyr's competence and patriotism.

"Forty and a half seconds," Anrakyr transmitted, and Lantrane allowed herself a concealed crest of irritation. It was strange – her emotions had become subdued, or perhaps more accurately slow, and changed significantly (as evidenced by a month of near-solitude, interrupted only by Anrakyr's occasional commentary, having little psychological effect), but they had not gone entirely, and were not the reason for the hole at the center of her mind.

What was missing was, rather… something she had not known she had. A soul, Anrakyr had dubbed it, and that was as good a name as any. Was it a figment of the Warp? An inefficient twist in neural circuits? Merely the absence of a fragment of hungry C'tan discontent that the star-gods had, accidentally or not, forced upon those meant to be their pawns?

And then the empty space in front of them changed, and what had been a road became a cell, the trap that they had feared sprung.

They stood behind an erratic grid of varying light, arranged as if a stained-glass window, though presenting no image Lantrane could discern. Beyond them, there was a trophy hall filled with crystalline cells holding wildly varying weaponry. Some were straightforward, swords and pikes and tridents, albeit decorated in widely varying ways and in some cases half-camouflaged. Others, Lantrane associated with things besides war: lanterns, cubes, screwdrivers. Yet more were filled with weapons with forms deemed impractical by every race in the Milky Way: taijitus, asterisks, and something that looked vaguely like a Terran hippopotamus. There was nothing resembling a gun, though. Many of the artifacts seemed to Lantrane to be whimpering, as if denied some portion of themselves and stating as much noospherically.

The path behind them was closed, as were their sides; Anrakyr poked the leaden-gray wall with his halberd, experimentally, but it was no illusion. Lantrane was not sure how it had emerged, but she had more crucial points to obsess over.

One of them being the Necron now walking into that hall. He looked not unlike Anrakyr, if slightly hunched where Pyrrhia's ruler stood straight. Moreover, his skeletal body glowed green, not blue, and seemed saturated with light instead of merely emitting it from a few orbs on his body. He wore a complex article of clothing built up of metalloid strips, with a bright green cloak around his shoulders and what seemed to be an extensible blade at his belt. His gaze turned to Anrakyr and Lantrane, and Lantrane realized that they both were on their knees. It was a look of unfaded memory, across a barely conceivable temporal abyss, and of an unbounded authority undimmed by those depths.

"Anrakyr, Overlord of Pyrrhia," Szarekh said (in Necrontyr rather than binary), causing Anrakyr's eyes to twinkle in confusion. "Oh, don't worry, I am silent no more. Your companion?"

"Srequi Lantrane of Mars, your grace," Lantrane said, unmoving.

"What _have_ you been up to, Anrakyr?" Szarekh's tone held only a thin slice of accusation, reflecting that he saw Anrakyr's cooperation with the C'tan as unlikely; but that slice was stark indeed.

"It was her choice, not mine," Anrakyr said. "You hid yourself well, your grace; I had to get your location out of a shard of Mag'ladroth, through a mix of intimidation and her sacrifice."

Szarekh's face cracked, indicating his worries were assuaged. "Never Necrontyr, yet Necron. Well, Anrakyr of Pyrrhia and Lantrane of Mars, I bid you welcome to the _Tritium_."

The bars of their cage vanished, and Anrakyr rose to walk forward. Lantrane followed him.

"An impressive collection," Anrakyr noted.

"Aye," Szarekh said, "but little of it is functional, so close to the Milky Way. The Warp confounds some of the mightiest tools, and both its strength and character are profoundly variable across megaparsecs."

"And some of those tools are complaining about that," Anrakyr added.

"Indeed," Szarekh said. "Come! We may be incapable of food and drink, but I have long run out of worthy opponents in saain-mo. And discuss, in the meantime, whatever your reasons for coming were."

Anrakyr's head vibrated at a slightly anxious tenor as he sent Lantrane the game's rules. He had been considered one of the empire's best players in his time, but Szarekh had presumably improved over the time he had been awake – a time Lantrane expected was a small fraction of the Necrons' era of sleep, to be sure, but still.

"It was originally a game of the Old Ones," Anrakyr transmitted to her in Necron binary. "A symbol, even, of the Necrontyr's derision for gods who spent months on a mere game. Now we are the only beings to retain it."

They walked up a set of barely moving stairs, and Lantrane was forced to note that the complex – whether it was indeed a vessel or not – looked truly ancient. Wear that had to have taken thousands of years to engrave itself was left unrepaired; yet regions were built up that implied repairs nonetheless happened. And Szarekh's mentions of foreign galaxies… Lantrane could actually believe some of those travels had been sublight.

"The great dark of space," Szarekh said, "smiles with a gaping maw." But the maw of time, it seemed, was nothing to him. How many millennia had he seen?

Was even the Emperor any more than an aberration in his heartbeat?

And then they came up to the game table, situated at the center of what seemed a royal bar. No alcohol or water, of course – Necrons mainly kept personal processes from ambient energy, herself included. She had needed to suppress the temptation to tinker with her own body, after realizing that. If she had still been an Adept and discovered such a possibility… but it was far from the greatest dazzling strangeness, in this new world she had entered. If her emotions had not been altered, her wonder would have been overwhelming; as it was, it was modified towards awe, though still abundant.

Anrakyr set down opposite Szarekh; Lantrane took up a position as the designated second, and a bodyguard as Szarekh's. Neither needed to make significant strategic decisions, fortunately. Lantrane could not expect to meaningfully contribute in that sense.

"First move is mine," Szarekh observed as the randomizer resolved, entering his first rules into the system, laying the game's foundation. Anrakyr responded by attacking randomization; Szarekh did not fight on that front, instead acting to speed the match up. In principle, a full saain-mo match could take Terran months; the shortened version Szarekh had here chosen was limited to a day, and with the current rules would be over within three hours.

Anrakyr pushed his luck, but Szarekh cut him off with what Lantrane found to be a clever loophole. Anrakyr's reaction indicated that it was in truth a well-established part of opening theory. The Pyrrhian pressed on scoring rules, but was once again repulsed, this time through a dagger that exposed weakness in his randomization advantage. Anrakyr responded with quick interplay to make massive gains in rule creation economy, Lantrane assisting, but Szarekh exploited the hole to score his first points and render the victory almost moot.

"Vakhephis' gambit," Anrakyr said, head vibrating. "You're only the third Necron to successfully pull that off on me."

"Well, since you blocked off Pririz's…."

Anrakyr nodded. "A rapid match, then."

Szarekh nodded, entering his next commands. Stars littered the field, in imitation of void warfare. "You've still got quite a chance, mind you."

"I'm aware," Anrakyr said, illusory cracks appearing on his face to signify calm confidence as ships began to appear. "So where are we, then? You mentioned that it was _near_ the Milky Way?"

"I should be able to reach the galactic east within a few of our years, if truly necessary," Szarekh said, Anrakyr winning the first battles, tilting the score in his favor. "You awoke early?"

"And have been trying to awake others," Anrakyr agreed. "Clocks have somewhat diverged over time, tectonic movements making matters worse." He radiated frustration, though trying ineffectively to hide it; Lantrane tried to make calming movements, but Anrakyr overextended nonetheless, allowing Szarekh to swoop in. Suddenly Anrakyr's lead had become Szarekh's, though Anrakyr regrouped in time to prevent collapse.

"I had my reasons," Szarekh declared after a long silence.

Anrakyr let out a rattling sigh, one of the few portions of Necrontyr body language close to humanity's. "Aye," he said, "and they were valid. But communication…."

Szarekh gave affirmation, as he failed to press his advantage, perhaps from distraction. Anrakyr sent probing attacks, scoring a few points to start catching up. Both focused on the game once more, as it became increasingly competitive; aside from a few compliments to one move or another, the Necrons were silent. The bodyguard – no, the Praetorian – had remained thus since appearing. Lantrane imitated her hosts.

Then Anrakyr made an attack, adding a crucial rule change in lieu of scoring… only for Szarekh to respond with his own, clearly planned attack, also forgoing the scoring to use a loophole in Anrakyr's move. A few shots later, Anrakyr's economic meta-advantage was in ruins, the score even, slightly above three hundred.

Anrakyr's head shook. "You've made that move before," he commented.

"Yes, in a recent game in Triangulum. Never underestimate the effect of boredom, Anrakyr. But this was meant to be a friendly match, was it not?"

"Yes, yes," Anrakyr said. The cracks appeared again, though this time they were ironic. "So. How many galaxies _have_ you visited, anyhow?"

"Ones not secret? Six hundred and fifty-eight. Over forty million years of subjective time."

What.

The shockingly unshocked Anrakyr looked at the board, as he pressed Szarekh's forces back again, capturing critical freedoms. "We'll both beat that score within an hour." A Necrontyr hour, of course, equal to roughly three-quarters of a Terran one. Alien time measurements were a special tier of torture.

"And the game will end soon after," Szarekh noted. "So, business?"

"Business," Anrakyr accepted, and there was another long, pregnant pause. "Your grace, we need you to return. To awaken the Necrons and lead our kind to war one last time. The End Times are here."

"The End Times?!" Szarekh's troop movements showed no sign of his shock, but his diplomatic ones were a different matter. The Silent King's forces were quickly surrounded, and suddenly Lantrane saw through the espionage system what Anrakyr must have noticed several minutes ago, a way to go in for a sudden kill. And Szarekh would not be able to realize it, at least not unless….

"The End Times," Anrakyr confirmed, flipping another star. "Lantrane is from Mars – a world we once knew as Time IV. Her race, from Time III, dominates the Milky Way."

"Terra?" Szarekh inquired. "Its location in the galactic plane is quite different from Time's."

"The humans moved it," Anrakyr said. "Other astrological prophecies match, too."

"And you want me to go back," Szarekh continued. "To renew the command protocols, and lead the Necrons into the final war, to gamble for everything."

"The gamble is inevitable," Anrakyr defended himself, even as he attacked on the field. "If we do not play, we merely lessen our chances."

"Indeed," Szarekh said, and suddenly the map shifted.

Lantrane took several minutes to realize just how Szarekh had been able to pull it off, but suddenly Anrakyr's forces were split by a trap, and Szarekh had split the Pyrrhian's attack. The center could not hold, and the attack meant to end the game was bogged down. Anrakyr still held the scoreboard advantage, but within a few seconds every other advantage went Szarekh's way.

Anrakyr looked down. "That…."

Szarekh was silent, looking into the space between Lantrane and Anrakyr. Seeing, perhaps, some shade from his eternity.

Anrakyr continued playing, trying to rebuild his economic advantage; Szarekh did not try to hurry the match. The conversation on galactic matters paused, a game taking precedence over galactic fate for several minutes.

"Anyhow," Szarekh concluded, "I will do as you recommend, with one exception. The End Times… I trust you told the truth, Anrakyr, but my wrath will impress even Mag'ladroth if you lied here. Unless it was a joke?"

"It was not, your grace," Anrakyr said, and cracks appeared on his face again, for the first time since Szarekh had turned the tide. By now the match was spread in the Silent King's favor, after a period of quick scoring.

"Then so be it," Szarekh said. "I will steer the _Tritium_ back to the Milky Way, and initiate galactic awakening… but the command protocols are gone, Anrakyr. I am king for eternity, but owner of Necronkind no more."

Anrakyr seemed some mixture of relieved and frustrated. "Then the dynasties… there'll be little to unite them. You are only one being, your grace, you cannot be everywhere."

Lantrane did not know how she felt, herself. Surely at a moment (on the planetary timescale, at least, it was a moment) as crucial as this supposedly was, Necronkind would come together, even if not literally forced to?

"But it is better than doing nothing," Szarekh said. "And I would not install the protocols again, even if I could. No… we will find our way in the flaming evening one by one. The _Tritium_ flies back to the Milky Way, Anrakyr; now, with that settled, back to the game?"

Anrakyr acquiesced, though even Lantrane saw that the match was hopeless. She took the moment to look around herself, at the implements she had no idea as to the function of. Absurdly ancient artifacts of a race that had risen from time's trenches, that would bring... _something_ … back to the galaxy. To what extent it would be somewhat benevolent, or at least beneficial, time would as ever tell. Yet Lantrane expected that they would improve matters, if only because they understood them.

She noted a pinprick hole, in the bar's wall, and rose to examine it; Anrakyr could manage for a few minutes by himself. To her surprise, when she leaned to observe it, it was a viewport. Through it, Lantrane could see a starscape – no, those fires were diffuse, a galaxyscape. And brightest of all by far, in the lower part of the vista, a great, tilted spiral lightfield, dominating the void.

The Milky Way.

Every empire, every life, every object she had ever known, within that half-steradian. But the space outside… she could see, with her newly enhanced vision, galaxies in every direction except the Milky Way's halo, no longer blocked out by dispersed starlight. It was not empty; it was full of dream reflections, of paths she could have walked.

And yet they were returning home, to that wheel from which all her paths had sprung, and from the anxiety Szarekh had shown, she suspected it was for a crux that might well matter for more than one galaxy. For a time relevant on a scale well past millennia.

Yes, Anrakyr was a questionable hero, and the race she now belonged to moreso, those ghosts whose lifespan was geologic. And she was most questionable of all, had in a sense been even as a member of the Mechanicum, that sinking ark she had abandoned (with doubt, but without hesitation). But did it matter? The daybreak, from what she understood, would be fragmented….

Its sun would shine no less brightly for it. For knowledge, and for every other value.

And it would shine with the luster of iron.


	28. Chapter Twenty

The din of hammers filled Northern Timefell. The art of smithing had changed much over the decamillennia, yet some principles remained parallel to the practices of yore. And so, even in at the dawn of the thirty-first millennium, hammers had their part in finishing weapons, even if they were built of etheric composites and optically woven metamaterials rather than simply iron.

Though iron had its role, too.

And such echoes were even more common, in all crafts, when a Primarch was involved; and so Ferrus Manus, beating out Arbilent for the last time, was well-aware he likely looked like a sweating artisan of the first millennium and not the thirty-first. Not that it mattered, as after all there was no one there to see him.

Ferrus was not forging an arsenal as an industrial process, not this time. One perfect sword was worth more, to a god, than a thousand great ones. And Ferrus now served a god; and so, he now completed Arbilent. Another hammer blow, the movement seeming mechanical yet in truth requiring great, human focus. A single blade, for a single ruler.

A month of Primarch's work, to craft a weapon worthy of its divine wielder, the Emperor himself.

The rebellious Primarchs would never craft its like, not so much due to their position alongside destruction as because none of them were artisans in his and Vulkan's fashion. Well, perhaps Perturabo. Ferrus had seen the other Primarch of iron as a rival, and indeed far too few had seen him as a friend… had that helped drive Perturabo into Horus's traitorous arms? All intelligence suggested that the Comrade had thrown in with that Coalition.

The Iron Hands had begun deployment, to the front lines of that war, as the war on Mars transitioned into memory. Ferrus would not join them; he had a separate path. But first, he had a sword to finish.

He turned it over, his hands burning with the effort, nearly beginning to melt. Arbilent was decorated, to the nanoscale, and its core was infused with the finest techniques of millennia of Martian and Medusan technological development, as well as psychic effects the Librarians had assisted him with. And while its true composition was complex, it shone like purest gold. Radiant, untainted… but not naïve, and far from weak.

A weapon with which the Emperor could return, when the time came, to the crusade. A weapon Ferrus knew he was not worthy to wield – and that, perhaps, could mean it was worthy of his father. If any weapon was.

He lay Arbilent down onto a platform, which slowly rotated, pushing it out of sight. His work was done; there were a few hours of temperature treatment remaining, and after that Arbilent would be complete. And Ferrus had no concept of how he would ever create a greater weapon.

Nevertheless, if he survived this war, he would. That was as sure as the stars themselves.

He lifted segments of his ceremonial armor and put them on, one by one. Black armor, for the ideals of the blacksmith, for the inevitable side effect of creation. In the same way that war itself was an inevitable (apparently) side effect. And also black armor for the void of the night sky, and for humanity's path into it.

And the white hand that crafted both, that had to. It was humanity that created, always. Perhaps there was strength to be found in surrendering choice to the automatic, in giving up emotion and willpower and humanity, but there were goals far more important than strength. He preferred the plain hand to the variant where the hand was contained within a Clan-symbol cog; what humanity had created was clear to see, in the armor itself, and in a sense in the Astartes that wore it. Better the shield-chain, for the Legion's duty.

Once ready, Ferrus opened the forge doors, exiting the innermost sanctum of Northern Timefell. The forge, in Mars's northern basin, had been his for the entire second phase of war. A wave of heat rolled out behind him, as Ferrus stepped through doorway after doorway, walking upwards.

For, it seemed, there was a centurion who he needed to see.

Northern Timefell was not undamaged by war, but its scars had healed, at least in its interior. The exterior still looked halfway between the industrial park it had been and a burnt ruin. Ferrus supposed he could make an analogy with the state of his own mind, and the spirit of the Legion. But they were not iron, not at their core.

They would need to remain thus. The Mechanicum, the Imperial sections thereof, as well. Too many had emphasized iron over flesh, and turned to the Dragon through its order, dreams overwhelming common sense and creating fanatics. The new Guardian had confirmed Semyon's death, and now continued his lonely vigil. Ferrus was unsure if much of meaning had changed, with the guard.

Though one Magos had found escape through that faith. Ulrach Branthan's blockade had been unable to stop Magos Ahotep's flight, and somehow Rogal Dorn's greater Solar System defenses had likewise been evaded. A ploy of the Dragon, or merely the peak capacity of iron? And for what, given that Ahotep would not find allies in the Coalition? Ferrus did not know, and he suspected the answer would not be pleasant.

But he would face it nonetheless. As now he faced the last of the descending set of doors within Northern Timefell, and walked out onto the parapet. Already the Legion was assembling for his address on the metallic plain that served as plaza, at the triumph of war's end.

Lorgar had chosen to remain on Terra, and he would meet his father privately at a later time. Dorn was here, though. But before his brother, his son.

"Castrmen Orth," Ferrus said, turning to his left.

"My lord," Orth said, kneeling. "You wished to see me?"

"Stand," Ferrus said. "Walk with me, Castrmen."

He did, as they ambled, peacefully, along wall's edge. Orth was still not entirely at peace, with Ferrus or with himself. Ferrus Manus was not sure if he could fix that – he couldn't do so for himself. But other things, Ferrus could do.

"You still worry about the consequences of siding with Branthan," Ferrus told his son. "Despite understanding his folly, and avenging your error with fire."

Orth nodded, slightly.

"Don't," Ferrus said. "Your service far outstrips your error."

"Thank you, lord," Orth said. "Part of my mind… Qevpilum's death, in Magma City. The knowledge he recovered may have great potential, but he was a personal friend. And with Rochaar in his new role as Firemaster, the sun has set on the Young Squid."

Frankly, while Ferrus mourned Qevpilum's death, his recent record was directed downhill. Though his replacement, Nusaamnius, an older Astarte… he would, Ferrus hoped, do better. As Strigeus could make a fine replacement for Orth.

"And you alone remain," Ferrus said with a slight smile. "But not for long, Castrmen."

The Iron Hand turned to his Primarch, and Ferrus saw Orth's request for explanation in his eyes.

"The Iron Fathers have done an excellent task maintaining the Legion's creations," Ferrus said. "And they have done no worse as inspiration. But it would be far too much to ask them to also lead on matters of the Warp."

"And I am among the few survivors of Branthan's cabal," Orth added, understanding Ferrus's direction.

"Precisely. I ask you to take on the public role of First Etherspinner, leading the development of a brotherhood devoted to mastering Chaos – without, I emphasize, letting Chaos master them. To develop aetheric technology, to maintain diplomatic relations with Lorgar's ecclesiarchy, to fight on battlefields affected by the daemonic. And – and this will not be among the official roles of the Etherspinners – to watch for ideological deviance. For times when Chaos worship falls into cults, or when its enemies plot against my authority."

Orth nodded, and Ferrus supposed he would be looking back to the massacre of Branthan's cabal. Of his own brothers.

"If you feel you are not capable of the last of that," Ferrus said, "I will not punish you. You have done enough such internal service for a lifetime."

"But my duty is eternal," Orth said. "And I will do whatever is necessary." He knelt, driving his sword point into the path. "This is a great honor, my lord, and I will do my best to deserve it. For Medusa."

Ferrus smiled. He had expected Orth to accept readily; while not unaffected by his brothers' deaths, the centurion was less broken-up than most Astartes would have been, at the incidents of Cassini Forge.

"You will stand opposite Eergabay," Ferrus clarified. "Chief Librarian and Chief Etherspinner. Go!"

Orth nodded, kneeling for just long enough for Ferrus to pin the Etherspinners' seal onto his armor. He looked at Orth with a smile as the Iron Hand moved towards his place in the Legion's order. Orth had responded well, and Ferrus Manus trusted him to lead the Iron Hands through Chaos in calm, rational fashion. He had, after all, already rejected its madness aspect once.

If only Ferrus could be so sure himself. It was the burden of the leader, to know on how thin a thread his work hung. To know, as well, what had been done to achieve that work, and what would yet have to be done.

Ferrus walked on, faster, meeting the bright yellow figure that stood out from the red and gray of the wall; and then he embraced Rogal Dorn.

"Ferrus," Dorn said. "So that is that, Mars is entirely ours?"

"And it will remain thus," Ferrus confirmed. "You received my remarks?"

"Indeed," Dorn said, "although the Emperor seemed less than ecstatic at them. Your role is accepted, but… you walk a narrow path."

Ferrus frowned. "Surely the Emperor has bigger concerns with the rebellion?"

"He is… not paranoid, not in the sense of irrationality, but the analogue for one as far above us as he is. The betrayal has taken its toll even on him, and divinity has not made him happy… the opposite, in fact. I do not think he ever wanted it."

Ferrus nodded. He would keep the Emperor's troubles in mind. And Dorn's own, which were also clear enough. "Good luck on Terra, Rogal."

And without further words, Ferrus Manus nodded to his brother and walked to the podium.

It looked out over Mars' northern plains. Forty thousand Iron Hands, including most of the Legion's command, had gathered to hear their father speak. They stood within their Clans, and as Ferrus took his position every one was at full attention. Before them, the forge's sides were arranged in titanic steps leading up to the podium, the promontories to Ferrus's sides hosting the chief officers of the Legion, which now included Castrmen Orth.

"Iron Hands!" Ferrus called. "Today we celebrate the retaking of Mars!"

Slight cheers. As he had planned.

"Aye, the celebration is dim indeed. This was a war we should never have had to fight, against enemies that should have protected our backs. But what is done is done.

"And so Mars, the center of learning and industry, Sol's secondary heart – Mars is wounded. Wounded deeply, scarred to the bone; but its flesh will recover. Yet the knowledge, the principles of Mars… they have been burned out of the traitorous Mechanicum, yet far too little is left of the loyal one to keep hold of them.

"Aye, the old Mechanicum is dead! And that tragedy far outweighs the victory we have achieved over the past year.

"And yet the Mechanicum lives on. It lives on in the archives recovered from fallen forges and in the armor each of you now wears. It lives on in the cogitator cores in the Imperial Palace and in the might of the Imperial fleet. And it lives on, moreover, in every one of the Imperium's citizens, who have been blessed by the touch of iron in their lives – and that is every last one of them. Aye, it lives on in flesh – and though flesh is weak, it is also the only true representation of iron's impact.

"And above all, the Mechanicum lives on in us." Ferrus swept his hand across his Legion. "We were its wings, and now we have budded off and must replace it. For we are the only ones who can.

"The battle of Mars is over. The reforging of Mars now begins! I am the Futuresmith, and I will not let the Imperium's grand destiny fall under the attacks of its betrayed present. Many of you will leave to protect the Imperium. Yet the core of the Legion will remain here, to build the future!"

He looked over his sons, a black grid of flesh and iron standing on red ground, stretching towards the horizon. "Flesh is weak, but that does not mean we can abandon it entirely, for it is only from its weakness that true strength arises. Iron can protect and destroy, but is only flesh that can meaningfully build. So let us build! Let this be our duty forevermore, on Mars and on Medusa, and on every other world – to forge as well as to fight, to look into the distance as well as unblinkingly at our foe. Let these be our chains forevermore – faith in the Emperor, duty to the Imperium, and need for eternity. Let this be our second founding!"

And this time, the cheers were deafening. Even Dorn smiled, in the distance to Ferrus' east, a sentinel invisible from the plaza.

The Imperium was not yet gone. He was not yet gone.

"No," the voice of Gabriel Santar said, "you are not. But neither am I."


	29. Epilogue: Doom

Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, looked at the dust the shuttle kicked up as it landed with some disapproval. He had intentionally placed his experiment some distance away from population centers, and the improvised spaceport some distance away from it in turn; yet while the Mechanicum shuttle's dust would not interfere with the experiment, it was still more than he would have expected from them.

Especially when the owner of the shuttle was the newly-minted Fabricator-General himself. Though perhaps, with the loss of Mars, the Mechanicum simply could not spare the expense for a clean landing.

The shuttle settled, hemmed in close to the orange canyon wall that blocked off one side of the platform. To the other side, perhaps as the reason for Kane's caution, yawned the Gresseti Canyon, the roaring of its river audible even at this height. In these highlands, it was the only place within fifty kilometers to be suitable for human habitation; and for that reason, humans had not bothered to make the trek, in the time before Mortarion.

They had been losing. Mortarion wondered, sometimes, what could have been if he had arrived to a rising world. Instead, Barbarus before him, or at least the human part thereof, had been a planet of dusk. He had inverted that, only to fail on the last step.

To be saved by one whom he had immediately suspected to be merely another facet of psychic tyranny. The Emperor had convinced him otherwise, in the early years, yet even Magnus had proven to possess more moral fiber – a fair bit more, at that. Though Mortarion was not confident that it would last.

The landing ramp at last rolled out, and Kane of the Mechanicum strode out, shaking Mortarion's hand with his half-biological one.

"Greetings, Lord Primarch," Kane said, still standing well away from Mortarion – in particular from his toxic collar. Wise, though Mortarion had to assume Kane had solid filtration systems, and he should have… but what was to gain? All Barbarus was above, and that would be a truer way for Kane to test himself, in the unlikely case that the Fabricator-General was so inclined.

"Greetings," Mortarion said, softly, as was his way. "Let us limit formalities. Come!"

A cloaked door slid open, allowing Mortarion and the adept into the first tunnel before sliding closed, leaving the two transhumans in shadow.

"Magos Zeth," Kane said, "asked to transmit her… dissatisfaction… with Rask's choice to sacrifice Magma City. But she will not go further with her discontent."

"Understandable," Mortarion accepted. He was somewhat ill at ease with Rask's choice to lie himself, even if dropping Magma City had been sensible. "Are we certain as to whether the Forge was indeed destroyed?"

"No," Kane admitted. "But I do understand the decision itself, Mortarion. My curiosity is as to why the sacrifice of three squads to defend a doomed stronghold, when one Marine could have blown the reactors, and two more defended him."

"To cause more damage to the Iron Hands," Mortarion said, though Kane should have deduced as much already. Or – "Do you mean the self-sacrificial aspect? Every one of those Astartes chose that mission."

"I am not accusing you or Rask of immorality, but... is such readiness to sacrifice oneself Astarte normal?"

Ah. "Somewhat." They stopped as Mortarion slid another door open, both phasing through the screen before it without problem. "All my sons – all sons of any Primarch – know they are to die in battle. Not as quickly as baselines perish from disease or accident, yet their fate is singular. That leads to… acceptance. Less for some Legions, more in others. Most of all, in a Legion built to endure, to guard both against, and for, the end. Most Astartes do not fear death merely because they do not fear anything. My sons embrace it… they fight in its shadow every day. As do I."

They passed onto a balcony, on the third floor of a vast rotunda. They walked along that edge, Kane scanning the simply decorated walls. Perhaps seeking hidden messages. He would find none.

Mortarion understood and used tactical subterfuge, but he was no Alpharius. And he was quite satisfied with that, though he was glad the Last Primarch was on their side. Moving too deep into the shadows made them little different from light, lost the rippling interplay.

"Your reforging of the Mechanicum is proceeding apace?" Mortarion inquired.

"They will not follow me as unquestioningly as Kelbor-Hal," Kane said. "But a figurehead would be enough to prevent infighting, given the crisis, and I am no figurehead. Yes, we are an organization again. Some are wondering how I escaped."

Kane's voice gave no indication of how weakened the Mechanicum truly was. Even if it did, the iron would mean Mortarion could hardly trust the Adept's signals. "I trust you told them nothing."

"Of course."

They passed into another door, and then into a clean room, weblike systems vacuuming the dust away; Mortarion disabled all active systems in his armor. For five minutes neither was able to speak loudly enough for the conversation to continue over the sterilization's din.

"So," Kane said as it was done and they passed to a viewport over an industrial – and entirely humanless – landscape, "what are you making, that you request my assistance for?"

No, Mortarion decided, he was not particularly fond of Kane, no more than he was ever fond of the Mechanicum. But both were trustworthy, and so he would hold ironclad his alliance with both.

"Consider the sulfur component," Mortarion said. "And combine with an iron-based compound. Inorganic variations of timoline, metallic bonds through the dimensions…."

"Jumbite," Kane said, awe clear on his face. "You truly believe you can synthesize jumbite?"

"It has been a focus of mine for some time," Mortarion made clear. "No less than a year remains, but I have replicated Satasir's results, and gone further."

"So you have come closer than any Adept," Kane said with a sigh. "Primarchs…. But why jumbite, Mortarion? The inorganic variant of polymorphine… useful, certainly, but in this time of war…."

Mortarion looked at Kane, wondering whether anyone besides him had worked these details out. Whether Kane would even believe him, if he informed the Fabricator-General of his calculations' results – they had been a surprise even to him.

But he had desired, at first, a protection against sorcery… and then come to understand. That sorcery was more than merely the psychic arts – it was their pinnacle, or rather their abyss. Their endpoint, in sum. Which even the Emperor could not withstand.

Except that just as the Warp pushed on reality, reality at its most turbulent could push on the Warp.

"Polymorphine alters flesh," Mortarion said. "Indeed, it is capable of creating flesh, under specific circumstances. But flesh… on the scale we now venture towards, flesh is weak.

"Jumbite… I believe it is not bound to the same limitations. It cannot achieve polymorphine's diversity, yet in all varieties it warps the fundamental fabric of reality."

"Like psychic effects," Kane said, making the connection.

"Aye." Mortarion turned his eyes from Kane, who stood closer to him and more comfortably now that his armor did not vent toxic gases, and looked at the crucibles of the experimental complex. "The mandatory precision is intense, Fabricator-General, and the consequences of a mistake grave. Because in some configurations, jumbite will be Chaos itself… as it will be, in others, its end."

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED in the tenth book of the Renegades Saga, _Long Forgotten Sons_.


End file.
